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It gets even better from there. Him and Omori against Xceed from the RWTL 2014 final and the tag title match from August are both must-see, and his Royal Road run from this year is a good opportunity to see him work smaller singles matches. At 46 he's possibly the best pure offensive wrestler out there and definitely one of the smartest in laying out a match. The only thing stopping him being a front runner for wrestler of the year is lack of footage. You mentioned lack of people covering it and the sad reason for it is that 2015 AJPW is a glorified Indy in terms of popularity. This is reflected in the TV coverage it gets where just a couple shows are taped every month and some key matches end up lost. Just in the last few months Akiyama has had some great sounding matches against Shiozaki in August (they're first time meeting in AJPW and part of the build to the tag title match), a Royal Road match against Aoki (who's also been having a hot year as a career mid carder finally breaking though), and in October teaming with Kanemaru against Xceed for Shiozaki's last match with the company. I was actually at that last Shiozaki match. Up to that moment, I had always assumed the only way Akiyama's body could have held up as well as it has would be if he took it easy when the TV cameras were off, but I was promptly proven wrong as he still cranked out a ****+ match, with his exchanges with Shiozaki being the highlight. In comparison to the 4 kings who took crazy bumps to create matches that feel epic and brutal, Akiyama is like a magician in how he manages to give matches a similar feel while preserving his body. Instead of using dangerous suplex variations and long near fall runs, I notice that he keeps things simple and instead focuses on his execution, on giving a nice snap to everything that he does and always making his opponent work for the advantage. He makes simple things like tie ups and chop exchanges feel like a grueling struggle.

Akiyama and Funaki both had really good TC runs, especially the match where Akiyama beat Suwama for the title. Also, it got yanked from YouTube but Kawada/Sasaki 2007 is a favorite of mine for Kawada's epic tears of blood http://i.imgur.com/GQ6IE6h.png The match quality picked up a lot in the last few years when they started bringing in Akiyama and the BJW guys, but I think most of Mutoh era AJPW was more about the wacky characters and giving the live crowds a good time than it was about great matches. The Voodoo Murders gimmick, for example, is hella fun live but the amount of good TV matches they've had is pretty tiny given how long the gimmick has been around. If you haven't seen it, though, definitely check out Akiyama's AJPW as that absolutely is a promotion that's had plenty of smartly worked MOTYC's this year. Even the undercards often have a few minor gems and rarely have bad matches.

For his WWE run, his cage match with Billy Graham was way better than it should have been, and a big part of that was Reed's heel charisma.

Regal vs Goldust in coliseum https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=5BcGx-7U1yQ Would be a pretty sweet venue for a WWE network special.

He was cheered as a heel in WCW, too. Don't see why it would be such a big deal to keep him heel anyway.

Saying "count the works, toss the shoots" would be a perfectly fine argument if we were talking about whether or not to count The Rock's football career. With Rings and Pancrase, though, the line between what's a work and a shoot isn't that clear. There's matches where guys seem to be working until a shoot finish, are rumored to have been shooting until a work finish, or where the guys are just so good it's impossible to tell if they're working or shooting. And, again, it's important to keep in mind that these promotions were presented as simply a continuation of shoot style instead of an entirely different sport. It's definitely a grey area overall that you can't just apply a hard and fast rule to, but with the guys who did start out in shoot style and pioneered MMA, I'd be inclined to agree with OJ's approach.

The point's been made that regardless of if Frye/Takayama was a work or a shoot, it's clearly a match that was performed with a pro wrestling mentality of going with what pops the crowd rather than doing what was smart to win the match. To me, just that alone is enough for me to feel comfortable viewing as a great match in Takayama's pro wrestling career, rather than just an irrelevant shoot fight. With 90's Pancrase, I think there was a similar thing at play given that you had a huge chunk of the guys there being former UWF guys who didn't mind working to long matches for the crowd, as jdw mentioned. You also had shoot style rule set and the thing with no strikes so guys could show off there matwork. It was definitely approached like a wrestling promotion, at least from the top guys. There's even Meltz's story about Funaki working the Rutten fight more so to have a great fight than to win to further support this. Besides that, Funaki and Suzuki's shoot background became a key part of their character when they came back to pro wrestling and they even worked a feud that referenced their Pancrase fight, so, yes, I think someone looking at those guys should take Pancrase into account.

This is actually something I think about a lot with Kandori/Hokuto, because there's so much inference from the previous injuries that Hokuto has had that a lot of people just assumed that was the story (although I think it might have been confirmed later on about the specific moves Hokuto sold big stemming from past injuries), but I wonder just how much is what we infer as opposed to what was actually presented. That can also be the difference between really getting into a match or not, I feel. I think any interpretation of a match's story is valid if it's supported by what's going on in the ring or the match's context. The distinction between what's inferred and what's presented seems like a false dichotomy as there's no definitive authority on what a match set out to do. Even the workers themselves could easily be bullshitting on what was planned and what was improvised.

That's exactly why Misawa comes across as a dick at points, though. Whereas Misawa was pretty much the golden boy getting pushed as a star attraction dating back to his Tiger Mask debut, Kawada spent years toiling away on the undercard and, no matter what he did, could never step out of Misawa's shadow. I don't think it's a US only thing to relate to the underdog in that scenario. I can't speak for sure since 1) I don't live in Japan and 2) wrestling is so unpopular I have no idea where I'd go to ask people, but watching matches like 6/9/95 or 1998 Tokyo Dome, you can clearly hear Kawada getting some big cheers as fans realize he's actually going to win. Yes, Kawadw and Taue were clearly booked as the top heels and I'm surprised people once thought otherwise, but I still think there was an element of sympathy underlying things as well.

KENTA vs Ricky Marvin 2009 KENTA vs Takashi Sugiura 2011 Jun Akiyama vs Masakatsu Funaki 2012 And, speaking of Funaki, how has no one mentioned the GOAT Funaki/Nakano match from 1989?

Disappointing match. I think it would have been a lot better if they had played up the NOAH vs NJPW aspect more and the fact that Nagata was fighting in enemy territory. I thought that was where they were headed at the beginning with Nagata's slap, but that seemed quickly abandoned. Even then, they still had a pretty compelling match building with the arm work and Kobashi's power vs Nagata's technical wizardry, but they went the easy route for the stretch of just doing a generic bomb fest. I agree that by the end Nagata didn't come across as much more than just a guy trading bombs with Kobashi. It certainly worked for the crowd but it's not a match I'm in a hurry to rewatch.

Not going to defend Stasiak but Maven seemed like a pretty hot talent coming off Tough Enough and Albert showed a lot of potential even with getting misused and having to go to NJPW to be a good big man. Replace Jindrak and Stasiak with Maven and Albert in the Survivor Series and I'd be on board with the idea.

Kobashi Kawada Misawa Taue 90's Kobashi is the GOAT babyface and his selling by performance in 6/9/95 is my favorite from any wrestler ever. Also a strong candidate for wrestler of the 2000's even with all the time he took off. Kawada's badassery is something I never get tired of watching and I always find myself cheering for him (except when he's facing Kobashi). The amount of great matches Misawa has been in is ridiculous. Probably been in more ****+ matches on tape than anyone else, and he did it without the long periods of inactivity taken by Kobashi and Kawada. Reason he's below those guys is I just don't find his character as compelling and they also seemed more creative in having great matches with lower ranked opponents and gaijin without relying as much on brutal spots for drama. I honestly wouldn't fault someone for thinking Taue was the best of all they've seen was his best stuff. RWTL 1996 final and CC 1995 final are some of the best matches ever, and he certainly does look like possibly the best guy in the promotion in those. That said, he just doesn't have the same depth to his resume as the other 3 and he seemed to start declining much earlier than them as well. I'd agree that he's been doing passed by Akiyama at this point for his post-split work (and it just dawned on me that Akiyama is now at the same age that the other four were either dead or retired at and still cranking out epic performances regularly. Maybe the smartest guy to come out of 90's AJPW.)

http://www.badlefthook.com/2015/10/5/9449205/about-bullshit-adrien-broner-boxing-muhammad-ali-floyd-mayweather-history-bradley-marquez-hopkins I've argued in the past that boxing can easily be looked at as a form of pro wrestling for similar reasons as what Meltz does for MMA, what with guys regularly cutting truthy promos and manufacturing feuds to sell more fights, whilst being pressured by promoters to put on crowd-pleasing brawls to receive more network exposure. The above article, though, delves into a point I had never considered with how boxers regularly use selling and psychology (or "bullshit," as the author calls it) to directly influence how those watching perceive the fight. The author brings up some very convincing examples of how even experts have been roped into buying into fighters' psychology and traces the style as having played a crucial role in the sport since the days of Ali. Very interesting read, I'd assume especially so for anyone who still balks at talking about combat sports using pro wrestling terminology.

Just watched on YouTube and thought it was a pretty awesome segment as we get one of the wackiest pro wrestling vignettes followed by Lex doing a posing routine that wouldn't look out of place on a bodybuilding stage. Liz looks great too. Has anyone ever combined bodybuilding aesthetics with pro wrestling psychology as well as Lex?

I'm not submitting a ballot but how the hell is Akiyama not already in? Until I saw people here voting for him I just assumed he'd been inducted at least a decade ago for his ring work.

Kobashi/Williams as the best AJ match of 1993 is an interesting pick.

He didn't suck pre-2001, but he also doesn't have a whole lot of memorable stuff before then, the Misawa and Kobashi matches being the big exceptions. I'd argue the stuff post-2004 adds a lot more to his case. I'd go as far as saying that you could extend his peak all the way to 2010, since that year saw him having pretty much the 2 best matches of the year against Nakamura and Sugiura.

Switching the dates for this and the 7/99 Kawada defense sounds like a great idea for me. The explanation I've always heard for the wonky booking of this match was 1. They couldn't do a title change because that would be the 5th TC change in as many matches in a row. 2. They still wanted to do a big match up to maintain fan interest coming out of the Tokyo Dome, like the year previous 3. Hence, the only option was to was to have Misawa go over in an epic to maintain credibility of the title, but to do so with them pushing each other so far it feels like either guy could win if they wrestled again. Having Misawa get his win back over Kawada here, though, satisfies both 1 and 2 while also making a Kobashi win more meaningful if he went over in July. About the only explanation I can think of for why they didn't do that was that they weren't confident in Kawada being ready to work a big singles match after having rushed back early from injury the month prior.

Fuck these people. The guy beat up his girlfriend several times, until he beat her to death. Every three days of so, a woman dies because she gets beatten to death. This is bullshit. Fuck these people and fuck Snuka. Then why not spend the precious time and money on those current victims of domestic violence (women aren't the only ones abused) instead of going after a 72 year old dude who might have done it over 30 years ago and who now has stomach cancer. At his current shape, I don't see him posing much of a danger to anyone and I have no idea why people here are so supportive of what is basically a waste of resources.

The Blackjacks vs Denucci and Rivera is a nice 70's WWWF gem.

Mil Mascaras coming out to Sky High in AJPW while the fans swarmed him is best disco entrance.

I agree with soup that people are underrating this. It took me 4 or 5 viewings (and some Japanese language study) to "get" this match but I now think that this was a perfect fit for AJ's first dome show main event. Sure, they didn't cut a fast pace, nor did it feel as competitive as their prior TC matches, but those weren't things they were trying to do either. The match comes across much better when you realize that it wasn't a secret that Misawa was wrestling with several injuries and in overall bad shape, and the commentator even explains such. Misawa's selling was perfectly adjusted for the occasion, looking less like the stoic ace and moreso a wounded dog desperately trying to stay the stoic ace but, ultimately, finding himself unable to keep up with his old rival. You know shit has gotten real when he writhes out in agony during the figure four segment. The match lacks that big run of offense where you think Misawa might pull it out, but I think it was for the best because Kawada just seemed too powerful on this night and too focused on finally stepping out of Misawa's shadow to let anything get in the way. It's beautiful how the match plays off of Misawa's usual formula where, during the point of the match when he usually starts his big comeback, he's too weak to pull it off and ends up getting pinned. I'd argue it's an unsung epic overall, not in the usual way of having amazing back-and-forth action that keeps you guessing, but in how it serves as an amazing build-up to the unforgettable moment of Kawada winning his first TC in 3 years and at last beating his career rival on AJ's biggest show ever.

Except Kobashi wrestled the 1998 Kawada TC match with a bad leg, whilst Kawada looked in the best shape of his career, both from a physique standpoint and with him having beaten Misawa at the dome a month prior. So I don't see why it's such a mark against Kobashi that he thought working as the underdog was the best way to approach the match.

The Heyman/Lesnar analogy doesn't work since the dude gets booked like a special attraction, so there's not much need for him to have promo skills. For someone who has to show up every week though, it's a necessary thing in today's social media age that they will need a good enough command of language to build a character on their own and interact with fans, and the best way to teach how to do that is to give them the experience of doing it. With people like Kana and KENTA who aren't native speakers, I'd say it's especially important to get them comfortable using the language. Also, I'm not sure how cutting promos would kill Kana's mystique. If you actually watch her shows, she cuts plenty of pro wrestling promos calling out opponents and runs angles to set up matches, just like any American promotion. Ditto with KENTA.