GOTNW

This is the earliest match where I've seen the amateur wrestling style pin counting replaced with modern pro-wrestling style theatrical pin counting with the referee slamming his palm to the mat for every second. The match itself essentially looks like a proto-WAR match, really intense brawling, violent lock-ups, shoving the other wrestler onto the ropes/corner, you could totally put an Ashura Hara right in with these guys. You get a lot of great Forearms, shoulder bump headbutts and short punches, but my favourite spot was probably the Americana Wristlock, really makes me long for the days when having actual combat knowledge to get into theatrical combat simulation was an expectation and not a bonus.

Alternative camera angle with some additional footage and narration: Speaking of things he invented in pro wrestling - 40 years before Inoki, Jim Londos was doing a special mixed rules match! Him and Oki Shikina battle it out under the following conditions: a round of jiu-jitsu (which at this point should be best understood as just "jacket grappling") followed by a round of good old-school catch-as-catch-can. Ok, there's a good chance someone did it before him, but do you really care? This match we have footage of and it looks absolutely amazing. You could basically copy/paste this match into 70s New Japan without any problem, and it wouldn't look that out of place even in the late 90s Inokiism era. Shikina busts out a bunch of great classic Judo offence like the Footsweeps and Sacrifice throws, and even hits something akin to a modern BJJ Scissors Sweep at one point. Londos is a natural at dramatizing fighting and absolutely matches Shikina in using the jacket to spice up his usual offense, using the collar grips for control and leverage so he could strike and throw. I really wish there there was at least 10 minutes of this because I have a hunch I'd be rating it as a classic. Still, the magnificence of Jim Londos shines so brightly here. Take the finish as an example. He goes through his finishing barrage of slams, and then stops for a second, hits Shikina with a Kesagiri chop to add insult to injury and then finally puts him down. Am I really supposed to watch something like this, scratch my head and go "hmmm geez, I can't really make up my mind on whether Jim Londos is one of the greatest wrestlers of all time or not"? Cause it doesn't sound very convincing to me right now.

This looks like a Kazunari Murakami match that happened to take place in 1932. First thing that happens as the bell rings is one guy levels the other with a Vader hammer. Then there's a crazy barrage of slaps and one guy just absolutely mauling the other with stomps as he's trapped under the ropes. The bits of matwork we get look great too. A minute of your life you can't spend much better.

Correction, the video doesn't show Coleman vs Oki but Londos vs Oki. The footage shown is from this match: The "Coleman vs Oki" part in the title of the thread should be removed. As far as the clip goes, this is pretty much the standard stuff you see in a short Jim Londos clip, you get some nice grappling and the finishing sequence with the highspots. This clip features the first documented footage of a Dropkick in pro-wrestling, and Coleman hits it nicely, with more focus on the impact than the form as you'd expect for the time. Very good narration of the action too.

Wrestling has always been about freak shows. Starting a post about Jim Londos with that probably sounds weird, but I think I haven't missed the mark. I think I get it. The appeal of Jim Londos is that he is a human ant - a small, but freakishly strong dude who goes and slams the bigger wrestlers. He even uses his size as an advantage, working a gimmick with the premise that his low center of gravity, alongside his incredible core strength and positional awareness makes him incredibly hard to take down. Maybe it won't win him a Nobel prize, but it is a very commendable amount of thought and creativity put into the basis of his working psychology, almost unimaginable in the era of "six star matches" and the "greatest wrestling ever". Now, for a word on the historical evolution of the dominant wrestling style. I am weary of making big claims like "Jim Londos invented Battlarts" and "Jim Londos invented cool wrestling", but I am not convinced they are untrue. Watching the available pre-1920s footage of pro-wrestling, obviously a big point is how amawres inspired it is, but to me the biggest takeaway is how much it feels like an exhibition. At this point prowres essentially feels like amateur wrestling flow rolling, with the only difference being that pro-wrestling had Snapmares. From what I've gathered, the 1920s are the decade of transformation, while in the 1930s the new working style is already formed. You could point to this era as the time that the first highspots, like the Tackle and the Dropkick, were introduced - but the main difference lies in the style itself. Strikes are added, matches feel grittier, more intense and violent. Essentially, what seems to have happened is that pro-wrestling evolved to make matches feel more like fights and less like grappling exhibitions, and it did so by increasing the violence and dramatizing the struggle of the grappling, instead of copying the logic of real fights which is "escape the hold as soon as you can and immediately improve your position". And by doing that it actually acquired the tools to mimick great real fights, where moves and styles are connected to individual fighters, given meaning, played up in the build-up and so on. Londos is at the forefront of all this. He is the legendary champion having great matches we at least have clips of on tape in a style that I absolutely adore watching. The rabbit punches/slaps/forearms we get intentionally have no wind-up, which is like the inverse of 80s American brawling, you can easily miss some of them. It's basically a paradox - they are doing it for flash, but in a way that is as realistic and unflashy as possible. But in turn, it makes the whole thing feel more organic, it glues you to the action and makes this wonderful pastiche dramatic and exciting without going overboard in the silliness. Maybe only paradoxical logic could have worked in a medium that was a paradox itself? Anyway. I'll have to figure how to compare him to those born in times of affordable widely available advanced video technology, but there's no way I'm submitting a "best wrestlers" list without Jim Londos on it.

You'd think a literal James Bond villain pro wrestler would get a little bit more attention, eh? WOS heavyweights were a blind spot for me, and it's something I wanted to explore. Roach immediately came to mind because I remembered going through this thread and just reading "Judo throws“. Immediately I imagined an Englishman working like Shota Chochishvili or an early Naoya Ogawa, which sounded utterly preposterous, so of course I had to check him out. Unfortunately, that's not quite what you get with Roach. In the first several matches I saw of his, he didn't even do any! After watching more, it turns out Roach does exactly two hip throws: a "regular“ Catch Hip Throw, and a Harai Makkikomi from a Wristlock. The more accurate comparison for Roach would be an English Ashura Hara. In his younger days, he could go anywhere. Weight classes be damned, I'm sure he would've had a great match with Mile Zrno as well. As he gets older, he essentially morphs into a WAR heavyweight, the matwork and the throws gradually go away, but the clubbing blows and forearms are there to stay. Unlike Hara, you can't really make an argument he was better older, because he had the same intensity and ferociousness in his younger days, it's just that he could connect it to doing crazy matwork too. Roach is in for me, though I still need to figure out the Roach/Ray Steele/Pete Roberts power ranking. Watching their matches, I came away thinking Steele was better. But I also came away thinking Kawada was better than Misawa when I was just getting into Japanese wrestling and binging their matches over a decade ago so it's probably wiser to not judge a book by its cover. The Misawa comparison is probably closer than might initially seem – Roach is really good at projecting dominance and asserting control of the match, which makes moments of him in peril much more engaging, and he smartly picks and chooses whom to sell "big“ against and how much. Just watching something like the Singh match from 1980, I don't think Singh brought the amazing babyface fire or had an inspiring underdog performance, but it almost doesn't matter because you get a great level of heat and crowd engagement without that just by Roach treating him like a big deal and varying his reaction to him in comparison to other wrestlers.

I was recently on an Atlantis kick that came out of the blue. I was going through my list of classics (or five stars, if you will), looking at it like a mess, thinking what I'm gonna need to add/remove/reevaluate, and I saw I had a Atlantis vs Kung Fu Apuestas on the list. And I said, you know what, this sounds pretty insane, what was going through my mind back then? I remember little outside of it being a hateful brawl. Almost ten years have passed, I have to watch this. And you know what, while I don't consider it a classic anymore, I do think it's a great match, and it's certainly a five star Atlantis performance. And it got me thinking, if he can drag a great brawl out of Kung Fu, it's highly unlikely he's never worked more in this style. There has to be more of this and that's what I need to look into. Whenever anyone talks about Atlantis, it's all about him being a legendary tecnico flying wrestler, and then somewhere in there it's mentioned "oh yeah he can brawl too". I know how I feel about Atlantis in the classic tecnico role. He rules. He's a wrestler where you almost need to point to his execution. There's a beauty in his technique which just isn't matched. Seth Rollins and El Hijo del Santo both do Suicide Dives, but it might as well not be the same move. Atlantis' Armdrags and Monkey Flips amaze with their fluidity. His Dropkick looks like a Russian cruise missile exploding in a collision. But I want to see Atlantis punch people in the face, rip their masks, slam their heads onto the apron and snapmare them before unmasking them himself. So I went through the match recommendations in this thread, and there's some good stuff. I really liked the Silver King match and the series of matches he had with Dr. Wagner Jr. around 2001-2002. That's where you get a mix, some classic Atlantic tecnico and some vicious brawling. But what stood out to me the most, and what seems glaringly missing in this thread as a case making point, is his mid 2000s rudo run. It's been mentioned, but mentioning it doesn't do it justice. This is the time of Misticomania, CMLL feels like the hottest promotion in the world, and Atlantis is right there in the midst of the craziness as a top rudo. And he heavily modifies his move-set, busting out a bunch of brutal offence, all of these Gordbusters and Flapjacks. There's a singles match with Mistico from 2005 which I really liked where he hit him with a damn Slingshot Brainbuster! Why is Atlantis suddenly turning into Tatsuhito Takaiwa? Fine with me, I don't mind. But yeah, watching a lot of this stuff, I don't really see anyone outside of Casas and Santo as luchadors who need to rank above him. Atlantis rules. I wish we had a resident 2000s CMLL expert who could go "here are the 15 best tags with rudo Atlantis from this time" on the spot. But if you just YT "Atlantis 2005/6" like I did you'll be fine the stuff is really good.

I'm glad Ishii's hard work has been rewarded and he successfully went from being a filler midcard title defence for Masato Tanaka to the legendary Hall of Famer and whatever else he is considered these days, but I'm gonna have to disqualify him from my list for replacing any sort of remembrance of Choshuist tradition in wrestling with Daisuke Sekimoto tribute matches.

Getting new Karl Gotch footage certainly wasn't something I was expecting during the last poll. The Gotch/Goulet vs Rugged Russians tag really is quite fascinating. Gotch basically works somewhere between Fujiwara and Hulk Hogan. It's a total blast. Gotch is in for me. I rated him #100 last time. I'll see where I'll place him this time. After watching the aforementioned tag and re-watching the Yoshimura and Inoki matches (both of which I thought were phenomenal and even better than I had remembered), I think I can make some general conclusions about his ability as a worker and not just rate him as a nod to his incredibly legacy and vision of pro wrestling. Obviously that's something which matters a great deal to me and was the motivation for his ranking last time, but I think we have just enough that I can fill in some gaps so that I at least don't have to put him on the bottom spot. That I have a willingness to watch every bit of his footage several times also helps. Still probably won't be where he should place, but what can you do.

Recently I've decided to explore the work of this gentleman named Pat Roach. One of his most notable opponents is none other than Ray Steele himself, and I have to say, watching those matches I can't help but wonder whether Steele is actually the better wrestler. Steele isn't particularly flashy at first, but that doesn't mean he lacks character. He plays a fair sportsman smartass, something akin to a Bret Hart (although I don't recall Bret showing quite as much flavour as Steele does in his in ring character work, but you get the gist of it). In spots like those where he gets the better of someone in an exchange and then offers them a handshake he performs them with an unironic smarminess you can't help but love. What stands out to me about Steele is how much he differs from other WOS workers. Many Brits bring the intensity, but Steele really brings the fire(~!) and struggle to his matches. There's a dynamic and excitement in his matches you rarely see with other workers, and they exist because of an underlying key principle in his work. I'll digress for a bit to illustrate this. If you've ever watched MMA, you've probably heard of scrambling. It's essentially what happens in grappling after the execution of a takedown. Those of us who have trained some grappling art have had the privilege of being yelled at, and occasionally have yelled at others not to concede takedowns. The idea if simple - it's not over until it's over. Fight back as long as you can, you haven't actually lost until your opponent has secured the position. This is how Ray Steele works. If it's a Forearm smash contest, he's fighting back where others just sell and magically get back into control in nowhere transitions. If he's gotten thrown, he'll try to kick the guy from bottom and throw him off his feet that way. That doesn't mean he no-sells, but he struggles more in spots where most wrestlers find it easier to just wait out the end of a control segment. And from what I've seen so far, he does so with good timing and variety, to the point where you can't predict it even if you're watching one Ray Steele match after another like I am right now. Additionally, Steele also stands out as a great bumper. Now, don't expect some Curt Hennig-esque act here. He takes basic bumps. But he takes then impactfully, and even more than that, violently. Also, Backslides! I love Backslides! Don't be a wanker, vote for Steele. Steele 2026.

I eat my words and come back to this thread once again, although I don't have that much new to say. Still, here we are. To bring up something which isn't going to be some great point of contention or something which would make or break a case, yet I believe hasn't been touched on before and should be noted in a comprehensive analysis - Hashimoto seems to have been very good at this prowres thing very early on. Jetlag uploaded a match vs Masa Funaki from 1986. I don't know if this is the earliest footage we have of Hashimoto, but it is another feather in his cap. Most of it is solid somewhat catch/shooty-inspired pro-grappling, but it really kicks off when they get to the finish and Hash just starts beating on Funaki. Everything he does looks like gold, you can't watch this and not think they had to have realized this guy was gonna be one of their top stars in a couple of years when he connected that beautiful kick combination. So together with the great Masa Chono Young Lion Cup Final from 1987 and a JIP of his match vs an unmasked Liger from around the same time (also probably from one of the Young Lion Cups), I would argue there's enough evidence to at least appreciate the quickness of his development as a worker. Maybe there's more stuff I'm not familiar with? Now, I also recently watched a match vs Masato Tanaka (ZERO-1 2002/03/02). And boy let me tell you, this match is a movie. This was my third time watching it. That should speak for itself, but I will note as I have grown in age I have come to appreciate matches which make me come back to them a lot more than the sheer volume of them in one's catalogue. Art should be beautiful. Art should be magnificent. Art should be inspiring. It shouldn't be disposable. I cannot accept this consumerist notion having 150 "good" inconsequential matches means as much as one great match which I will feel the need to continously re-watch in as the years pass. That sounds more like an addiction than a genuine fandom. As far as the match goes, it is mostly remembered as a prolonged squash. A brutal, violent spectacle of one, but one nonetheless. You could even call it "Hashimoto fanservice". In fact, my motivation behind the re-watch was that I just wanted to see Hashimoto kick and beat-up someone really bad, and this match was the purest example I could think of. And my memory was right - it absolutely works for that - but I still managed to get something new out of it. I dissected the concept of rhytm-atmosphere and how Hashimoto used it to play with conventions in my dissertation on the 1994-2-17 Tenryu match on the last page, and we got something similar here. Towards the end of the match, Tanaka hits a big move for a nearfall and immediately grabs a Half-Nelson Choke (Katahajime/Tazmission). How does Hashimoto, after just having being surprised with a counter and a nearfall, react to additional peril? He gets up and just shrugs the hold off. This could have absolutely looked ridiculous, like a Davey Richards, or even Orane Cassidy spot that is more a parody than anything. But in context in ruled. Because Hashimoto brutalized Tanaka so bad he made you feel sorry for the dude that got Powerbombed over the top rope through tables like nothing. So no wonder once he caught his breath, Tanaka was so exhausted he couldn't stand on his own feet and Hashimoto could just stand up, shrug him off and let him fall to the mat like a piece of trash. And credit to Tanaka- he really conveyed the emotion of a punished criminal serving out his sentence in the form of a Hashimoto beatdown throughout the match, bringing the fire and defiance only to be struck down again as he faced the fate of Sisyphus. One thing I value which isn't fair, but then again neither is life, is that this match is a pure expression of Shinya Hashimoto's vision of pro wrestling. You just don't get these laboratory conditions outside of starting your own promotion, where you push the house style in the direction you want. You can give an honorary mention to politicking your way into the office, but even that isn't as empowering. No one "produced" Hashimoto, you don't have to think about how much of this is agent input and so on. Obviously a vision in itself doesn't have to be good, someone can have a stylistic vision without being a wrestling entrepreneur, and of course someone else can execute the vision better than the original visionary, but for those whom this applies to (and I've realized Inoki and Maeda, who are the other wrestlers I'm considering for the top spot, have cases even more built on this), it is something I note.

For a project like this, it is understandable for one to have reservations about the esteemed Hungarian gentleman known as Tibor Szakacs, considering an online search is going to get you less than ten matches of his. You could very easily come to the conclusion his work cannot be properly assessed. Fear not-this is clearly Stalinist propaganda. You only need to watch about two to realize how cool Tibor Szakacs is. "World of Sport Volk Han" is a pretty apt description, as he is mostly shown in the role of the crowd-pleasing foreigner who is respected for his grappling wizardry. More importantly, it provides us with the conceptual framework which manages to properly emphasize that Szakacs really is incredibly cool. As a heavyweight, Szakacs possesses the snugness and viciousness you'd hope for, yet he easily blends them with beautiful headstand counters in chain wrestling sequences. He excels in the role of the grappling master, escaping holds with ingenious trickery, reminiscent of how he escaped communism.

Sometimes when I sleep, I can hear little children screaming. Their cries become louder and louder. Their echoes gradually encompass me. I wake up in a cold sweat. What is this feeling of terror? Was I sleepwalking again? Did I go through a sleep paralysis? Who knows. And why the children? Who are they? Are these the ghosts of Bosniak children Croat separatist forces massacred? Is there a deeper meaning to this? Am I being called to action? To call for responsibility in our wrongdoings without apologism and whataboutism? To spread the word of peace and tolerance, build bridges between cultures and nations and dedicate my life to creating a better future? No. These are the screams of children begging Paul Jones to escape a Johnny Valentine Headlock.

Chris Markoff [1969-05-16-JWA] Antonio Inoki vs Chris Markoff [1969-4-16 JWA] Chris Markoff & Bobo Brazil vs Giant Baba & Kintaro Oki [1973-5-15 CWF] Chris Markoff & Buddy Colt vs Paul Jones & Eddie Graham Speaking of Southeastern European greats! Chris Markoff is a man of mystery. He is supposed to have been born in Yugoslavia, from where his family had migrated to Minneapolis. Where in Yugoslavia? Both Serbia and North Macedonia are cited. Since North Macedonia used to be a part of Serbia before WWII, this would make it more likely he was from Vardar than Serbia proper. No data on his birth name is available online. My detective work also led me to strangers on social media claiming to be related to him and their surnames and social media profiles would point to him being a Pole instead of a south Slav. Since anyone can write anything on the internet and I didn't manage to find proof strangers online were actually related to him, we'll have to go with what's in the books. How is this relevant for the career of Chris Markoff and the case for him being one of the best wrestlers? His case is basically completely dependent on the Inoki match. For my money, it's an absolute classic in the "brutal, bloody brawls" genre, a cousin of Sangre Chicana vs MS-1, Lawler vs Dundee and so on. Why then do I insist on bringing his ethnicity and origin into this? Well, Northern Macedonia is a land where more than 4 wars took place in the span of about 40 years, and they traumatized the local population so bad it resulted in an identity crisis where they now think they're descendants of Greeks who never even stepped foot on today's territory of Northern Macedonia. Excuse to talk about historical Balkan geopolitics? No, this post is about Chris Markoff. Markoff was either from this area (and with his family fleeing to the US in the 40s, it's a safe bet they were fascist collaborators) or was willing to lie and make it his entire gimmick that he was from there, only to be redirected to being an evil Russian due to pragmatic reasons. Point being. This dude was clearly out there. And you can sense it. When he stomps on Inoki's head and punches it, yeah it looks great, but he's really being a prick about it, you can feel the hate flowing through him. He ramps the crowd up and makes Inoki look like the mythical warrior hero your grandfather would tell you about, except it's every bit as good as his memory made him to be. This is the epic spectacle of violence a film director imagines for his main scene, except it's come to life, live, with Markoff smacking Inoki's head into the announce table. We also have a very good performance from him in the Baba/Oki tag, where we get some quality stooging mixed in with the compact and crisp offence. And the Paul Jones tag is really good. There is more Markoff footage but unfortunately it seems to be mostly be him as an old guy in AWA and what I've seen isn't bad, but it's not exactly spectacular either. One amazing match might not be enough to make it even for his biggest advocates, but he is someone whom I'd really like to learn more about and look into (if it is even possible to do so with how much footage has survived).

I finally watched the JWA matches. The Valentine/Kiniski vs Inoki/Baba bout it absolutely terrific. Valentine basically works exactly like you'd expect him to-stalling, pacing, impactful offence, timing, everything is there. I checked Cagematch to see whether they were a regular team, and I assume they might not have perfect records for older matches, but they don't appear to have been one. That would make it more impressive they managed to mash so perfectly-their division of labour was spot on, they knew exactly when to interfere or take over and really looked like an all time great tag. Amazing star presence, amazing heat, incredible attention to detail. My favourite moment of the match was probably when Baba tried to drag Kiniski from the apron and Valentine blocked it by grabbing Kiniski's other leg. It doesn't sound very impressive in text form, but that's the beauty of prowres-it's not rocket science, you take a simple idea, structure it and dramatize it and its meaning increases exponentially in the heat of the moment. And speaking of heat, boy was there any. They walked the line of having complaints to the referee and their clique get but managed to do it so it resembles the situation on a basketball court after a controversial ref call more than the silly stuff WWE's done in the last 30 or so years, and the crowd really responded like an angry sporting crowd. An absolute classic and a spectacle of a match. The Valentine/Kroffat vs Oki/Yoshimura tag isn't as spectacular, but that is hardly surprising. Kroffat has a couple of good moments here where he stooges, but isn't particularly interesting when working holds. Think Randy Orton-nothing wrong mechanically with his Hammerlock, but it's just not fun to watch. Yoshimura and Oki are good workers but don't do much here, especially Oki. Valentine does a lot more wrestling in this match and is as gritty when working holds as you'd hope, but it's not just that he grabs really good holds-his body positioning, facial expressions and body language are all on point, selling the intensity of the holds and glueing you to his work. In the finish of this match he basically did the Bryan Danielson "MMA" Elbow Spam, except it looked much better than Danielson's usually does. Speaking of Elbows-did anyone in history have a better Elbow Drop than this guy? So yeah. Johnny Valentine. Great wrestler, will rank for me. I get people have reservations over the amount of footage, I will just note that if the criteria for research was as strict as it is in some people's "my best wrestlers list", almost no sociological or public opinion studies would ever get done.

You know what is an underrated concept that wrestling rarely exploits that well? Defense. Choshu getting his hands up instantly after smacking Inoki while being trapped in the Indian Deathlock. Inoki turning his back to Choshu to absborb the impact of the Lariat. Small things go a long way in adding flavour to a match. I'm sure he's done it many other times, but Choshu putting on a modified Abdominal Stretch to finally trap Inoki's arm so he couldn't block his Scorpion Deathlock and using that to transition into it felt like such an epic spot. They make everything feel earned, turn every single thing into a struggle, put on an epic, insanely dramatic match without sacrificing the aura of any move used and smartly protecting their big ones (see: Choshu smelling blood and not even bothering to pin Inoki after hitting him with a Lariat and going straight for the leg once he started limping). Phenomenal bout.

I keep my pro wrestling watching to a minimum nowadays, but recent unfortunate circumstances have sparked my imagination. I watched two very high singles profile matches: Antonio Inoki vs Riki Choshu- 1984/8/2 Antonio Inoki vs Masa Saito-1987/4/27 Now, first thing's first-both of these matches are excellent and absolutely fantastic, and I would rate *at least* the Choshu match as an all time classic. Several things stood out to me. Let's start with the finishes, because I think it's really something in which time proved the superiority of Inoki's vision. And vision is absolutely the right term, because he very much defined the house style of New Japan as such. The magic of pro wrestling is created when you are able to suspend your disbelief and immerse yourself in the drama. The prerequisites for that are fairly simple: the work needs to be believable and the story needs to be unpredictable. I'll come back to believability, later, let's focus on the unpredictability for now. How do you achieve predictability? By not being predictable, i.e. not repeating the same thing over and over again. If you watch a high level pro wrestling match these days, there's about a 95% chance it's going to end with the finisher of the winner. Now, special techniques aren't a negative per se. You see them in every combat sport: Boxing, Kickboxing, Muay Thai, Judo, Grappling/BJJ, Amateur Wrestling and so on. But when you basically know the finish, the drama isn't in how it's going to end, but in how you are going to get there. Now-I'm not saying you can't work in that frame and create greatness. But you're limiting your options. Inoki has his specialties, but he always varied his options, and wasn't afraid of doing less and going with a context appropriate alternative instead of just using it as an idea for a set-up of the "default" finish used in everything from a six man to the biggest match of your career. Believability? I honestly have a much harder time suspending my disbelief for many pro wrestling matches these days. They just look phony, to me, sorry. I prefer watching real combat these days, that's on me. But I was honestly shocked with how good and believable, well....pretty much everything was. Especially the matwork. The key is always in the details. You can see these guys were clearly trained and knew how to grapple for real. Am I necessarily betting on any of them to win an imaginary theoretical 1985 ADCC? No. But it's much easier to suspend my disbelief when I see Choshu snapping Inoki's head down with a nice snapdown into a front headlock, when I see legitimate wrestling rides used. Their transitions and counters make sense: Inoki counters a Straight Footlock by pushing the leg away so his opponent can't lock it in full-on. When him and Choshu are battling for a Scorpion Deathlock there's constant gripfighting, Inoki is using his core to try to prevent Choshu from turning him over. Things look good and make sense. And that's honestly just a start-it's really his incredibly creativity in chaining all those sequences and timing the transitions that make it great pro wrestling work. And there's the selling. Inoki isn't going to pinball bump like Fuerza Guerrera, Mr. Perfect and friends; but his selling tells a story. He doesn't need to sell much-he's Inoki, why would he sell? The best should less because they are the best. But when he starts selling more expressively, the crowd feels it. It signifies a transition, the pace of the match changes, an opportunity for his rival is created. His facial expressions and body language are absolutely in sync with the narrative he's engaged everyone in the arena with. You can see how this man managed to con people into giving him money despite wasting it time and time again through his illustrious career. When I put things into context, all things considered, for what I like in wrestling, he's definitely top 5 of all time and a strong candidate for #1 on the '26 vote next to Maeda and Hashimoto.

I've been on a Kawada kick lately, so let's revisit him a bit. His strengths are well known-here's a guy who is going to full on slap someone straight in their face, stomp on their head while holding them in a Half Crab, kick them in the back while they're laying on the floor as hard he can and turn into an elite puncher once he loses his temper. These things, and his general demeanor, attitude and lack of teeth create the idea of Kawada. It's really cool and it's fair to say that he is generally also really good at bringing it to life. Now, for some negatives. His selling gets goofy. I have a hunch it got worse at time went by because in the 1998 Hase match it was significantly worse than in the 93 Misawa TC match I watched. Structurally his failed firing up could add to matches but often he would either go overboard with it to the point it would look cartoony or time it badly. While I'm talking about Hase, I think he did a much better job of using that type of selling in their match (and outperformed him in general). Timing is something that also bothered me with how he'd use his Powerbomb, where he'd just throw them out there: either without really teasing them, or (which bothered me way more) without the proper build-up, at points in the match where it just didn't fit and add to the match as much as it should've. This bothered me both in the Hase match (he Powerbombed Hase to complete silence) and in the Misawa one (where they just didn't work for me as big moments or nearfalls). He can also get sloppy, with poor form on kicking and those short knees to clunky moves on the mat. Speaking of which, I appreciate his willingness to sometimes lean into shooty tendencies, but he wasn't very good at it. Watching him submit Honda with a terrible looking Toe Hold hurt me spiritually. He had an amateur background and could definitely follow the lead of someone who knew what they were doing (Honda, Hase, Ilyukhin) but I don't think crocodile tears should be shed over the AJPW-UWFi feud not happening or Kawada not working more U-Style. I might have more to add later (e.g. I was absolutely not a fan of how the Vader match was structured and was severly disappointed by it) when something clicks in my head but still. It's Kawada. He'll be fine.

Ogawa is interesting because he's someone who, maybe due to sheer circumstances, has a fair number of canonically "great" matches, particularly when tagging with Misawa (the match against KENTA and Marufuji might be my favourite NOAH tag), but he's more remembered for adding flavour to those matches and having unique performances. If you want a big list of bombastic singles matches, Ogawa is only going to go so far, but if you're more interested in the intrinsics when rating someone, the sky is the limit. If you have an eye for detail, watch something like: Kensuke Sasaki, Takeshi Morishima & Katsuhiko Nakajima vs. Genichiro Tenryu, Yoshinari Ogawa & Kotaro Suzuki-NOAH 27.9.2009. and you're going to marvel at how Ogawa does little things to glue transitions together, sell the threat of Morishima and so on. The Takayama match is probably my favourite match of his, because it is one of the rare cases in pro wrestling where you see a cat and mouse narrative executed at a very high level. I remember Daniel Bryan doing something like that vs. Big Show and Mark Henry in ~2011, but Ogawa vs Takayama is probably the best example I can think of. An incredibly simple match that shows the virtues of stubborness in match structure, where the entire time you're waiting for Takayama to get his hands on Ogawa, or even get a control segment. The work is very good, but there isn't much heat, so you'd expect a Takayama control segment here and there just to get liven the crowd up a bit. And it keeps not coming, again and again. And then the whole thing just explodes. Perfect length, perfect timing.

This has got to be the most repeated almost factually incorrect statement on this board. Unfortunately there are no facts with pro wrestling opinions. But this one is just nonsense. On the last list Taue finished 26. You claim he is top 20. This is not an egrogious case of being underrated. Taue finished above El Hijo Del Santo, Jun Akiyama, El Satanico, Yoshiaki Fujiwara, Riki Choshu, Akira Hokuto, Jim Breaks and Volk Han, just to name a few. That is as far as being underrated as one can get. In fact, if I have to chose, I'm much closer to the opinion Taue is overrated. There are plenty of "nothing" Taue performances and matches, but he doesn't come close to Akiyama's creativity and consistency, peak, longevity. Really, anything. The only thing Taue has above Akiyama is that he was part of more 90s high-end AJPW tags? Hell even that could probably be challenged. Could Taue have done something like essentially carried a rookie to a MOTYC in a match that had Kobashi and Kensuke Sasaki? Taue has a cool hierarchical match against Mossman? I've lost count of how many Akiyama has had. And he finished above Akiyama. We're calling this guy underrated? The guy that finished above consensus style GOATs like Fujiwara/Han/Tamura, Hokuto/Aja Kong, Santo/Satanico, Breaks etc.? The fact* is, Taue fanboys are just reactionaries that cling onto the idea he is "underrated" because they either lack a) perspective or b) actual underrated wrestlers to champion for. Taue is cool and is rated relatively fairly. Sorry folks, facts* don't care about your feelings. Maybe it's the incredibly high ratings of Misawa, Kobashi, Kawada etc. that you should question instead.

Inoki seemed really hurt in the last project by the ridiculous idea he should be judged by his performances in random 80s six man tags or whatever it was that the DVDVR crew watched a bunch and there not being enough people to push back that narrative. I basically have no time to watch pro wrestling these days, but in the last.....I don't know, it could have been year, six months, what is time? I watched the Markoff match and rewatched the 1971 Destroyer bout. The Markoff match completely blew me away. I wasn't really expecting THAT level of violence and heat from a 1969 match. It really felt like a legendary brawl that I could put side by side with any of the great lucha apuestas (and aesthetically reminded me a lot of them too). Just a complete masterclass in crowd control, and a great example of how to do projected violence (meaning, you do stomp on someone's head for real, but not with the intensity Daisuke Ikeda will; but the context, selling and the manipulation of crowd make it seem like a war scene). It's the type of match where you can see Inoki's legendary aura growing on the spot. Where the hell was this match when we were doing the Best Of Pre-80s Japanese Wrestling Project? The Destroyer match was interesting. It was very much a 70s style grappling oriented bout, but what was most shocking about it was the pace. I realise there's a solid chance it was due to limited TV time or some other shenanigans, but the fact remains this match stands as a very unique example of a 70s grappling sprint. The elaborated milking of holds you'd expect from 70s matwork is almost completely absent here. If you want a crash course in 70s grappling stylistics, and have the attention span of a post-modern fan: this is the perfect match for you. Obiously, I think the work itself is excellent; but still, the way it is worked is what stands out, especially when you consider that Inoki is the wrestler that time and time again chose to have these types of unique matches, even (or more correctly, especially and even more so) as he was in charge of things. I enjoyed his tag with Baba, and in one of their tags against the Funks noticed him and Dory Funk Jr. seemed to have excellent chemistry. So I'm looking forward to watching those hour long matches they had about two years from now.

This is actually a gigantic plus. If the best thing a wrestler can say is that they checked a mark three thousand times, their career is lame. If anything, modern wrestling has a plethora of footage we'd have been just fine had it not been taped. Han created moments that people would have either preserved at all cost or would be retold as legends like the Johnny Valentine-Wahoo matches, which is why he's discussed as one of the greatest wrestlers ever by sane people who aren't incapable of processing pro-wrestling only through the degenerate vision of it as a cartoon soap opera with method actors completely divorced from real combat. Anyway. I would probaby side with Tamura, but have Maeda over both

I think one of the biggest advantages Aoyagi has over, say, a modern worker with a similar background like Katsuhiko Nakajima, is that he worked in an environment that was so much superior for showcasing and emphasizing his strengths. It helps that he often played a big part in helping create said environment, but that also shows he had an understanding of what made it work. In terms of 90s indy karate workers, right now I would put him ahead of Mochizuki (DQed from my list for going to Dragon Gate) but below Akitoshi Saito who had a much stronger 2000s run. He will absolutely be on my list but his appraisement is still a work in progress.

Few wrestlers have instantly enamored me like Masanobu Kurisu, and he's someone whom I'm gonna be especially focusing on. Here is this gnarly old asshole who can work the mat and whose holds look really tight, but for some reason is is just absolutely in love with destroying people. And when I say destroy, I mean he's up there with Ikeda, Fujita, Yumiko Hotta and friends in terms of all time great violence bringers in pro wrestling. This guy will flat out shoot Headbutt, Slap and Punt Kick people's heads off the canvas, he doesn't care one bit. I believe his match vs Shoji Akiyoshi (that would be young Jado!) is the first one I ever watched, and, I don't remember whether I had watched the full or clipped version (I think it was the clipped one), but there's a handheld of the entire match online, and. Man. Just a truly transcedental experience of violence which had me questioning how come stuff like this is legal in the first place. Five star GOTNW match. Want to hear of another case of Kurisu destroying someone you wouldn't expect? Takashi Okamura, the first president of Dragon Gate, got ethered by Kurisu at a Kitao pro show in 1994. When it comes to japanese wrestling trivia, I don't think it gets any better than that. If the sheer fact that the first president of Dragon Gate used to be a kimono wearing indy karate worker whom Kurisu wrecked with Jon Jones Clinch Elbows doesn't move you, do you really have a heart? Rest assured, his case isn't all about one sided beatdowns. The 1/4/1990 Kurisu/Dragon Master-Onita/Goto tag is a classic, all time great chaotic tag, up there with anything of its kind. Want another great violent tag brawl? Kurisu/Leduc vs Onita/Murdoch features a versatile Kurisu performance: on one hand he acts like a giant prick against Onita, just tearing into him; yet does some quality stooging when he has to deal with Murdoch and his punches. Not every match of his is going to go to those lengths of absurd violence, but even when he keeps the ruthlessness to a medium, Kurisu still feels like Kurisu. The 1991 Aoyagi matches are a good primer of a more restrained Kurisu: the 5.2. match looks more like what you'd expect a Kurisu-Aoyagi match with them immediately going after each other's throat, while the 21.9. one feels more complete and conclusive. By now you've probably processed enough information to be able to assume Kurisu would fare well as an invader. BUT! Not only we do get to see him in that role in New Japan, he squares off against Hashimoto in a terrific singles match with incredible heat: it's violent, but it's at least equally as successful thanks to its smart lay-out as it is the brutality. Along with that, there's a quite unique tag in which he tags with Animal Hamaguchi vs. Choshu and Koshinaka: it's not the hate filled slaughterhouse you might want, but it is still an incredibly fun tag made by the unique atmosphere completely made by Kurisu's presence. He's so super high level at conveying a prick, the crowd almost has no choice but to boo him when he does, well, literally anything. Want to see Kurisu in another role? His 1994 WAR match against Daikokubo Benkei (here known as Arashi) sees Kurisu essentially pinball for a ridiculously looking super heavyweight with sumo offence-and it rules. Kurisu pops up in Big Mouth Loud in 2005/6 as a 60+ year old. He's past his prime, a little slower and maybe not quite intense-but he's still menacing, still hard hitting, still an asshole-still Kurisu. I can only be thankful age doesn't affect one's ability to throw an unprotected chairshot as much as it does a Tope Suicida. He looks about what you'd expect old man Kurisu to do against Usuda and Nakano, while in his match vs. Kido they essentially prove that even as senior citizens they could work an entertaining old school technical bout (the match also had a section of entertaining gimmickery, which they could afford now as veterans). I consider the Usuda match the best of the bunch. So yeah. Based on what I've seen so far and what I appreciate in wrestling, I really have no reason not to conclude this dude isn't, say, a top 20 wrestler of all time for me.

I was watching some Wahoo McDaniel recently, and while the comparisons to Hashimoto and Choshu that have been made have grounds, the one worker whom came to my mind was Kensuke Sasaki. Now, that might not sound as flattering, but coming from me, it's not all that bad either. Just looking at this thread, no one actually makes a proper case for Sasaki, and compared to 2006, he fell something like 70 spots on the final rankings. I have never considered myself Kensuke Sasaki fanboy #1, but I've always revered him for his working capability and he has only grown in my eyes as my taste has developed. The Kensuke Sasaki I'm talking about is the 21th century one (starting with 2000). This is a case making post: if you familiarize yourself with him and enjoy it, know you're gonna see a different worker in the 90s. Maybe you'll like that one too, but that's irrelevant for now. Firstly, just philosophically. I love who Kensuke Sasaki is. I love how he projects himself. I love that he cleary either puts thought into making himself look a certain way or just has a fragile ego. He's the type of wrestler who will kick out at 1, who will win a test of strength against a dude who's a head taller than him, who won't just job to anyone or let anyone just get their shit in and work long control segments on him. Essentially, Kensuke Sasaki is the antithesis to the new school of japanese wrestling where dudes don't care about anything. They don't care about hierarchy, they don't care about winning (or more importantly: not losing), they don't care about seducing a high profile female wrestler when a joint show forces them into the same hotel, they don't care enough to leave their home promotion for leverage. This is how you get to modern japanese wrestling, where the only difference I see between IDK, Goto vs Karl Anderson and Okabayashi vs Sekimoto is the latter is at least following the Choshu tradition in terms of offence, but the structure is the same. Strike, strike, strike. Body language and selling is replaced with the „I pooped my pants“ face. Strike, strike. Run the ropes, get countered, move on. Not with Kensuke. This is a dude who will go on a control segment for 5 minutes just because they're making him do a job, and he wants you to remember he looked strong. He doesn't possess your standard run of the mill jwres move-set either: he'll club your neck, throw a Seoi-Nage, one arm Powerbomb you to hell. Anyway. The matches. I remember doing this for Shinjiro Ohtani, where I wanted to deconstruct the myth of him not having a good output in the 2000s. With the 2000s being Kensuke Sasaki's prime, it's only natural I make a list for it too, though there's no point in it being as comprehensive. It's a mix of personal favourites (whom I do consider great) and canon, I don't think they'll be hard to distinguish: vs Tenryu-NJPW 4.1.2000. vs Kawada-NJPW 9.10.2000. vs Kawada-NJPW 4.1.2001. vs Hashimoto-NJPW 9.4.2001. (If you like the sound of Hash and Sasaki working a proto-Futen match, you're in luck) vs Fujita-NJPW 8.10.2001. vs Naoya Ogawa-NJPW 4.1.2002. vs Nagata-NJPW 7.6.2002. vs Takayama-NJPW 3.8.2002. vs Bob Sapp-NJPW 28.3.2004. (I'm not kidding, this rules) vs Takayama-NJPW 8.8.2004. vs Tenryu-NJPW 15.8.2004. vs Kobashi-NOAH 18.7.2005. vs Ohtani-ZERO-1 7.8.2005. w/Nakajima vs Kobashi & Shiozaki-NOAH 5.11.2005. w/Nakajima vs Akiyama & Kikuchi-NOAH 4.12.2005. vs Murakami-BML 22.3.2006. w/Murakami vs Fujiwara & Minoru Suzuki-BML 19.4.2006. vs Minoru Suzuki-AJPW 28.6.2007. (This will alienate some folks. It's long, has a prolonged headlock control segment and a bunch of limbwork which may be sold in a way that won't satisfy some. However-I love it, and it is absolutely authentic Kensuke Sasaki) vs Toshiaki Kawada-AJPW 18.10.2007. vs Morishima-NOAH 6.9.2008. vs Akiyama-NOAH 10.4.2010. vs Sugiura-NOAH 23.7.2011. w/Akiyama vs Takayama & Omori-All Together 27.8.2011. (Kensuke spends the entire match treating Omori like he's only there because they needed a fall guy. Guess how it ends?) vs KENTA-NOAH 8.11.2011. (I wish this was still online. KENTA had just debuted his GAME OVER submission around this time, and it was treated as an instant killshot. They worked a very smart match built around KENTA trying to lure and trap Sasaki into it with Sasaki using his strength and size to escape the predicaments he'd find himself in.) vs Sugiura-NOAH 14.11.2011. w/Miyahara vs Takayama & Maybach Taniguchi-NOAH 4.11.2012. (This isn't some legendary match, but the context makes it incredibly amusing. Around this time Taniguchi had made the transition from Shuhei to Maybach, motivated by KENTA's Rick Ross fandom. He had started to get a push as monster-type wrestler. Naturally Kensuke's reaction to that was to oblitare Taniguchi and not let him get a single move in during this brief bout, as it ended with the Kensuke Office team winning after a DQ as Taniguchi hit Sasaki and Miyahara with a bunch of chairshots. This both works in the context of the match [getting his ass beat motivated Taniguchi to get DQed] and in the context of the Kensuke Sasaki mentality [the sheer fact he had to sell during the post-match means he had to compensate for it by not giving Taniguchi anything]) vs Nakajima-Diamond Ring 11.2.2014. (this is his retirement match, and really, a perfect showcase of the Kensuke Sasaki mentality. He puts over his protege, Katsuhiko Nakajima, in a match in which he takes basically the entire match and just relentlessly beats the shit out of him-like, I'm used to Kensuke dominating, but he really makes a point here; and then Nakajima just kinda hits a couple of moves and goes over.) Obviously this isn't everything, among others off the top of my head I can remember him having several good in bouts in his AJPW run (some in the Champion Carnival for sure) and a million high-profile tags in late 2000s/early 2010s, but if you're interested you can do some digging of your own.