DylanZero

I think that's all any reasonable person could ask for from this candidate. I'm with you.

Said this on twitter when this was brought up, but I'm leaning Rush pretty strongly. Is a proven draw this year, is as good and universally respected for his in-ring work as pretty much anyone on this card besides maybe Hechicero and Casas. Tanahashi's draw a few days ago and win puts him firmly as the #1 for NJPW guys for me this year and probably my working #2 overall. Everyone else will probably need something big to win me over for this year.

While I do think it was definitely brave to nominate Warrior and also very nice to actually say why rather than just to be vague, I kind of agree with what Matt D said earlier. I feel like there are at least 100 people nominated that are clearly better than Warrior purely in terms of in-ring careers regardless of criteria and I'd be surprised if you thought otherwise by 2016. I'd love to see your thoughts on some of these other guys, Marv. Personally count me among the haters for this guy. Not personally or anything, he didn't seem that much worse than a bunch of other guys, and even have a certain soft spot for his schtick, just not in the ring for all the reasons said a gillion times.

Since I nominated him (special thanks to dawho for doing the heavy lifting on dealing out the reviews) he was a guy I wanted to take a hard look at right away, I definitely thought he deserved a look considering how many weak candidates have been nominated thus far. I watched a fair amount of matches from the first half of the 00s of his, many of which were the MPro tags with Togo. Sadly, Top 100 looked further away than before. Not because he was bad by any means. Actually thought he was quite good, especially in stuff like the Trios w/Togo/TAKA vs Fleisch/Curry/Shinzaki (And yes, that is perhaps the most random group of wrestlers ever thrown into a 3 Man team) and the like where he got chances to shine, but usually I felt he got a bit overshadowed by Togo and felt more like a cog in the machine of a good-great match or a "good hand" rather than stealing the show. There's still a ways to go though and my favorites thus far have been his singles matches and that will likely be where his case rests, but that's more speculation at this point. Really liked his matches vs. Tiger Mask 4 in 2002, and it's pretty great that he did a good job of simple things in selling as well as in that match some good timing in his heel spots on TM, will need to see more but I've liked what I saw thus far. Will need some of his bigger matches to deliver I will say. Still have to get to some of the BattlArts stuff and some of his later work (Heard good things about an all DANGAN Yankees tag teaming with Fujita Hayato vs Tanaka/Sugiura that happened two weeks ago that I look forward to) in addition to ECW which was a god point to bring up by Jetlag. Here's a good place to start in terms of just of a timeline. A pre-ECW match in BJW. for the Jr. Title no less vs Tajiri where he definitely holds his own. Thought this would appeal to some folks here and some who just kinda lump him with other, lesser workers here and I actually think this could easily be counted as a hidden gem, really loved this match a lot and for Hidaka alone, holy crap was he good for a guy that had barely been going a year. Did a lot right though got a little rushed during the final part of the match but still a well above average.

I actually liked his NO FEAR run (But I'm also one of Omori's bigger supporters as well.) too even though there wasn't a lot of classics or anything. There were many great performances in Takayama's singles runs, also another point in his favor is that he has a lot of good in a lot of very different and companies and styles. Really such a fine wrestler in his younger days out of the all people nominated so far I would say a vote for Takayama is simply a vote for fun.

The '01 match with Otani and the '06 tag vs Sasaki/Nakajima were the exact two matches I was thinking of when I said "above average". And we're still looking at maybe a dozen matches over a decade. The stuff from wXw I'm very excited about watching though.

Got mixed up on the years there sorry. For some reason I had them starting in AJPW in 2012 instead 2011, my bad. Well, I'll give his early stuff more of a chance, but I will say his DDT run wasn't something I'd consider very good at all (No fault of Sekimoto's because I actively dislike his opponents). I also want to say I really want to like what I see with him because I'm a fan. For a list like this my argument was there wasn't enough there, if there is more than what I remember and what we're talking about here with Tanaka I'm an easy sell. Looking forward to it.

Well this sucks. No wonder Torres and Wrestling II aren't getting any traction.

Slam Dunks: Negro Casas Jumbo Tsuruta Jerry Lawler Genichiro Tenryu Nick Bockwinkel Ric Flair Mitsuharu Misawa Kenta Kobashi Terry Funk Satanico Toshiaki Kawada Santito Blue Panther Tatsumi Fujinami Billy Robinson El Dandy Ricky Steamboat Atlantis Bobby Eaton Ricky Morton Buddy Rose Rey Misterio Jr. Rick Martel Jun Akiyama Koji Kanemoto Jushin Liger Shinjiro Otani Hiroshi Hase Eddie Guerrero Vader Akira Hokuto Akira Maeda Volk Han Riki Choshu Manami Toyota Eric Embry KENTA 37 with people either I'm already considering for top 20 or a few that will be on the lower end of my list that meant too much for me personally at the time I started watching them and after for me NOT to find a spot for them on my list.

I like Sekimoto a lot but you guys are forcing my hand here a bit. Sugiura's had a fine run of consistency (Well, brutality in many ways, but still did great for his style and at least pretty good for most) that's lasted since he was still a Jr. in like 2002. Even now his team with Tanaka is basically doing a better version of what Sekimoto/Okabayashi did in early 2013. Sekimoto has been wrestling since before 2000. The first 10 years of his career I can think of literally 2 matches I would say were even above average. The rest ranges from flatout bad, to mediocre, to...deathmatch. To me that doesn't hold up at all against some of these other guys, some he does but especially not Sugiura.

I think where Sekimoto shines, as you can tell in my favorite matches of his list is being able to pull off the big vs. small matchup, as well as being a strong tag wrestler. I'm not as big a fan of some of these other guys in terms of some of his matches against other big guys, I would describe him as more hit or miss (but with more hit!) and definitely has examples of what Waco's talking about. I think he really has a grip on how to make guys smaller than him look not only good enough to pull off exciting stuff, but believeable in their offense and that they can win to me as well as the fans in the arena and against the right underdog has created some really great high-end stuff. Also thought his team with Okabayashi invading other promotions like AJPW was the most interesting thing going at one point. Though also had a really disappointing singles run there as well. Like I said, how far can this run carry him? Pretty far according to Joe. I like it! But truthfully he's really not a lock for my list.

Really? I thought he was the man of the match in the 6-man at Aniversario, and that was while teaming with two really good wrestlers, and against two really good wrestlers. (Felino was okay too) Also last year he had arguably the best match of the show vs Averno. No doubt he takes some nights off nowadays but when it's time for a big performance? My man always delivers.

I'd love to see an impromptu vote among everyone on this website as well as other HOF voters as to whether Madden is allowed to keep his vote after his run. Seems like he just wants to piss people off, just like with everything else he's ever done.

I'm kind of in agreement with shoe. Really loved his style and even his recent old man run has yielded some very good performances and that's to me where he evens the gap a bit against some of these other guys. I would probably say there are at least two guys firmly ahead of him in Lucha Libre and at least 1 or 2 more I thought were better in their primes. His high marks are longevity & versatility in the roles he's good-great at moreso than just a long list of amazing matches (though he has a few). Top 5 Luchador? Top 20 overall? High vote? None of those are out of the question on my ballot though besides the last one they're a bit unlikely.

Keep in mind there's another year to go, with great work I could see myself going with a couple of these guys. The only ones I'd be actively against voting for would be Cavernario (Not enough body of work) & Rush (My heart...but for similar reasons. He wasn't very good at all until around that Terrible Apuestas match and turned the corner) & Titán (Same.). I guess my top candidate of this bunch would be Hechicero with all his indy work to be determined on. Would be interested in a Mistico's CMLL run rewatch and think he's definitely worth a thread at least. RE: Faby - I would argue Dark Angel and Marcela are nearly or as good or better than her, also would say all 3 are worth a look.

I was listening to a podcast where "Machine Gun" Karl Anderson said he was never a fan of Tito. He's now my working number 1. (But seriously he'll probably make it in as a later guy, deserving for sure)

MJH hit the nail on the head as to what I feel. The only thing holding them back from #1 is longevity. Still, if they aren't everybody's list, man I don't know.

Nah, it's okay. I don't think we all have to like everybody the same and your points were valid. I was considering all 3 of the other guys in the tag too but there's just something about Kotoge...maybe it was because I've followed this story from the start and seen him grow. That match was Sugiura's first match back from a relatively long injury hiatus and they also played up a grudge from before the injury where Sugi turned on BRAVE (The faction Kotoge's apart of that's led by Marufuji) to join No Mercy. I first saw that match from Ditch's site and I remember him saying something to the extent of what I felt and what won me over. He had such good underdog fire and babyface charisma he really made the crowd get into him I couldn't help but think he was the hidden gem of the NOAH Jr. scene. I think your criticisms are totally valid about his "Fire and Ice" selling in that match though in hindsight and I probably overrated it a tad, I guess it was hard to believe an Osaka Pro trained guy worked a match that well and it caught me by surprise the first time out. Still liked it though and thought the main headbutt spot was good in a "That may be legitamitely dangerous" kinda way and it made him look like more than some young punk Jr. to the fans. Glad you liked the tag at least a decent amount, even if it wasn't because of pinky. *Final note: He wore pink for most of his run but changed to white to match with Ishimori who also changed from full on yellow for the team. Plus even if you hate every single person I nominate, we'll always have Hechicero in common. I'll nominate again (staying away from NOAH for noqwthough there's still some more guys I'll go back to later). My second pick the first time was going to be Kana just to be different, but you just watched some Satomura and another Joshi gal so soon would be a bit redundant. Here I'll go to the British scene with another personal fav of mine as I stated in my introduction, James Mason and his tag team! With Deano. And I'm going 3 distinct matches here so lets look at it. We've got a tag vs Dave Mastiff and Doug Williams from January. A 6 Man match with Carl Curtis vs. Robbie Dynamite, Kayden Lay, and Zack Gibson from July. And a singles match against each other! Also from July.

Will defer to someone with more knowledge of how to navigate the board if there are three reviews for Ikuto Hidaka, Shinobu, & Madoka? Will make a microscope for each if no when I get enough time to bang out some full reviews but would enjoy starting a discussion on these dudes in a bit of a quicker fashion, particularly the last guy.

So I just want to say I watched the first match from the latest episode of Las Superestrellas and that kick flurry Rikochet does pretty much made him by far my favorite wrestler who uses that name in the business. This seems like it'll be a real fun show to follow. Thanks for getting me started! Is there a price for the Aniversario PPV and where can I get it? UStream like everybody else or their own deal? Too bad about Patron not being there, wonder if Ricardo/Chimera is taking his place in whatever they had planned?

I would love to see more of the current stuff from this scene and in general find it fascinating. The historical stuff we've seen and gone through in this thread alone (special thanks to El Boricua for doing such a great job with his backstories and general knowledge) has really been great stuff and just great passion shown all around. Anyway, main point is I've looked fairly hard for some current WWC and the like and I'm more or less at a loss. So just someone out there let me know if there's a YT channel, website, anywhere I can watch this stuff? Or is this endeavor just hopeless? Especially with Aniversario coming up soon that seems a great place to start watching if possible so it would seem relevant to ask here. Even another PR promotion would be pretty cool, but WWC is the one I'm most familiar with today.

I'll co-sign Masami over Edge as the #5. The battle for #1 chin is more hotly contested in wrestling than I ever imagined.

Not only does he work smart for himself, as has been alluded to, he made damn near every single person that stepped in the ring with him look better than they actually were. I'm very much looking forward to looking back at his stuff for entertainment value. He's the man. No doubt about it.

Amazing wrestler once he "got it". But before that he often seemed to foray into deathmatch style a little too much for my liking early on in his career and it's crazy to think he's been wrestling as long as he has and that's no compliment because nothing he did struck me as special until 2011. My two favorite matches of his weren't even mentioned by the OP and that was vs Hidaka in 1/1/11 in Z1 and vs Madoka last August in BJW. (And I definitely think those guys should/will get nominated, possibly by me) His number of matches in numerous settings and promotions make him a strong candidate for best of the younger active wrestlers going. How far can that take him though? Could easily see him making it above someone like KENTA among fans of his if we're objective. Definitely possible.

One of my personal favorites, despite never getting much in the way of a meaningful push and I would always advocate this guy to people who only knew of the Four Pillars. And really only the big three. I can't help but wonder if some online go a bit too far though with him. Still, solid tag runs and two heavy MOTYCs against Kobashi and Akiyama (I think the Kobashi match is a strong candidate for greatest NOAH match ever and was my MOTY for '03, maybe it was a Kobashi match but what made it for me was Honda's bumping and selling of everything Kobashi brought), some really nice Trios appearances in the 90s where he was underpushed, he'll be on the list for sure, and likely a high vote if the SC poll says anything. Was the unsung midcard hero of two companies, and arguably two of the best ever when he was around. Really loved him in NOAH and highly anticipate going back to see some of his AJPW work. He did get old a little too fast in his career to starting so late and he was uninspired on top of that during random tags past '06 or so, but still could turn it up once in a blue moon. Such a unique style and some huge performances make him hard to argue against for me personally. But the later stuff where he fell off a bit could see him not making it depending on some of these WoS guys and how they hold up and I wouldn't begrudge anyone leaving him off. Recommended viewing before the Kobashi match if you haven't seen that yet since they're both pretty cool matches too in addition to showing the start of Honda's brief main event run: w/ BURNING (Kobashi, Honda, KENTA, & Kikuchi) vs. Sternness (Akiyama, Saito, Hashi, & Kanemaru) February 18, '03 vs. Saito March 30, '03