GOTNW

There's also a 4 minute clip from September of the same year which has some artistic interventions in it, but by what we see it might have been even more heated than that one.

The Bull Curry match and what we have of the 1974 Wahoo one are great, but OJ's recent thread has inspired me to take a look at some of that stuff and man, Valentine looks like an absolute world beater in the Florida footage. Him and Thesz in particular seem to have had fantastic chemistry, just working super tight, going after each other's throat. There's a nice amount variety in the footage too: Valentine works as a vicious aggressor in the Jack Brisco match as well as in the tag vs Brisco and Paul Jones, but is in more of a selling role when he eats a big beatdown from Tim Woods. But the best match of the all looks to have been the Paul Jones one, it helps the clip we have isn't that short (around 6 minutes), but by all means it had to have been an amazing brawl. If you enjoy quality face punching you're really doing yourself a disservice by not checking it out. This dude has to rank for me, I refuse to even entertain the idea there are 100 people who were better at fake fighting than him.

To make this fair we need to bring about 50 japanese salarymen whose favourite wrestler growing up was Choshu to the board Savage has to be the most "I don't get it" US wrestler to me. Meaning, for example I'm not gonna sing swan songs about Flair, but it's clear the man has a very strong GOAT case if you like the style he does. Reading through Savage's thread, most of the focus there is on the emotional connection, charisma, favouritism etc. I feel like out of famous North American wrestlers I have the worst sense of what his "case" is, whereas I have a pretty good feel of what they are for Bret Hart, Shawn Michaels, Lawler, Austin, Hogan, Terry Funk, Golden Age workers, whomever. I know I've seen some of his pimped WWF matches, but that had to have been about 10 years ago, and I am not *that* old...yet. I remember enjoying his matches vs Warrior and Steamboat. Would anyone care to make an argument for him that wasn't so much character based? Is there even a point? If he was a Wahoo McDaniel/Johnny Valentine type I'd probably feel a catharsis and just agree with the praise of his aura, but I don't really care for his gimmick.

This thread has fallen into the trap of cyclical repetition of cliche arguments, so I'll try to spice it up. I don't think this thread is going to gain anything if I once again express my opinion on 80s ace Jumbo or how watching more 70s All Japan with a wider context has changed my opinion on rookie Jumbo, or if I say, well-basically anything about Hashimoto at this point (I reserve the right to be provoked into eating my own words later). That's all good and relevant for the debate, but not terribly interesting. What I think needs to be said instead is that that this whole "where are Hashimoto MOTYCs" is a pretty good reflection of pro wrestling greatness canon. The canon that is very much based in big parts on 90s AJPW, which Jumbo obviously played a big part in making happen. So, in a way, its his house. The case with Hashimoto is much more interesting. You ask what is the best Hashimoto match and you get thrown something like the Mutoh 1995 G1 match. It's a great match. Maybe others rate it higher than me, but to me, it's not a classic. It's a template Hashimoto beatdown match I've seen him have many times, and I can think of several examples where I thought it had been better executed (vs Fujinami 4.4.1994., vs Hase 3.8.1993.), and I don't even think it's the best Hashimoto vs Mutoh match (that would be the 5.6.1997. one). Compare that to something like the Fujinami 5.9.1998. match, which I think is an obvious classic. That's not a match that had a lot of traction five years ago. In fact, looking at it now it didn't even have a thread until 2017 when Jetlag checked it out on my recommendation/pimping/whatever (I reviewed it in 2016). I haven't seen anyone who has watched that match think it wasn't great, and I certainly think it's a much better representation of what Hashimoto was capable of as a worker-and just plainly what Hashimoto was as a worker. Yet this classic just plain out didn't exist in prowres fandom consciousness five years ago. There's also just the simple fact Hashimoto was a different kind of worker than Kobashi or Jumbo or Misawa or whomever. You can hate on Inoki the wrestler all you want (and be wrong-that's another case I'm gonna be making sooner or later) but his influence on the way Hashimoto works is pretty self-evident. If, and I use the term reluctantly with a heavy heart, true "strong style" is something you hold dear and feel like you can emerge yourself in completely, it sounds almost unreasonable to me you'd think (booking aside) Hashimoto vs Naoya Ogawa from 11.10.1999. and 7.4.2000. aren't at least great matches, if not more. And that becomes relevant because the question isn't "does Hashimoto have the matches", it's "do I value the matches Hashimoto has as much as I do the champion matches of another style?". And there's also just the fact the documentation and awareness of Hashimoto epics isn't on the same level as it is for some other great wrestlers. Fore example, to say his 2004 match vs Kawada is a classic is hardly a contrarian or fresh opinion, but it wasn't something people immediately thought of here. Ditto the Yamazaki matches. I think that in itself shows he has a respectably deep catalogue of very high-end matches.

It had been a while since I had watched a Hashimoto match until today, at least 2-3 years, if not more. For whatever reason, after getting some life stuff out the way and breathing a little easier, I decided to put on Hashimoto vs Tenryu (1994-2-17). I hadn't really thought I'd ever need, much less want to post in this thread again, but when a match basically provokes me into a structuralist analysis, I almost have no choice. Obviously, it's a great match. But what is crucial in making it great? Is it that Hashimoto and Tenryu hit really hard? Is it their body language and the way carry themselves? Is it that they intertwine their personalities with how they work and adapt it to this particular match-up? Is it the choices they make in selling? Is it what transitions they chose? The answer to all of those is obviously yes-but all things mentioned above are just parts of the greater sum. What is most crucial in why this match works is its atmosphere and its rhythm. And really, they make a whole. This rhythm-atmosphere is absolutely the most important aspect of this match, and likely Hashimoto's (and probably not just his, but I'm not willing to make big arguments yet) work in general. It takes precedence over everything. It takes precedence over sense itself. Because fights don't make sense. They're not supposed to. This is something that has shaped my view on e.g. limbwork. I don't care if limbwork is sold or not sold. It doesn't matter. Selling is not inherently good-it is only good if it results in good artistic work, and that depends on the wider context. This match, for example, had a little bit of armwork. It would have been absolutely moronic for them to turn armwork into the focal point of a heated brawl. Maybe not even that-it would have been moronic for them to do that in THIS heated brawl. This match was a war of attrition-a your turn/my turn, my beatdown/your beatdown slugfest of medium length, with focused exhaustion selling until someone finally succumbed. The last thing it needed was Tenryu holding his arm while going for a Powerbomb or a Lariat: the way they rhythmically set-up the match required them to clash over and over again, not work dramatic teases over whether something was going to happen. Maybe that would have fit a 30 minute match, but not here. That Armlock is still needed: because the match needed a breath. Constant clashes can be cool too, but when you're trying to provoke emotions out of a crowd, milking rhythm changes is a much better option. You can guess whether it worked. The presence of rhythm is absolutely holistic. It's why some sells need to be small, some need to be big. Sometimes a Tenryu Chop provokes a Hashimoto kick in response, sometimes it sends him to the floor (well, when it sends him to the floor it's likely it's aimed at his throat which is another layer to take in consideration, but you get the point). Some transitions are creative and unpredictable-some are not. But the predictable transitions took part in the middle of the match, during the building of the heat. They were like the punchlines at the end of a verse-you knew they were coming, but you wanted them anyway. However, when the closing of the match came along, you got to the creative work that kept you guessing and added to the dramatic finish (the corner struggle over DDT being a perfect example of that, and also of turning a spot you can imagine being an absolutely throwaway note in 95% of wrestling matches into an epic scene). I said rhytm-atmosphere takes precende over sense itself, and here's another example to show you it does. Late in the match, Hashimoto falls down after a sequence in which he hits several moves on Tenryu. Yes, this is exhaustion selling. Yes, you can explain this by the fact him and Tenryu just went after each other's throat non-stop and there was enough violence prior to it to justify this sell. But it's not expected. We know how pro wrestling selling works: you don't sell after hitting your own move, and if you do, it's because you were hit with a move priot to executing your own. But Hashimoto falls down nonetheless: and it's crucial he does, because it intrigues the crowd. It helps build the atmosphere of tension and curiosity through another rhythm change. This artistic choice is no small feat to pull off: most wrestlers, some even great ones, would look silly if they tried to do it. Hashimoto CAN do it, because him and Tenryu have already created this atmosphere of a legitimate, incredibly violent battle. And now he can choose to take it to the next level by playing with logic itself. Like a wise man once said: "Whoever has will be given more, and they will have an abundance. Whoever does not have, even what they have will be taken from them." And this is why, to me, Hashimoto is, at worst, a top 5 wrestler of all time.

I've basically dissected everything there is to with Akiyama in this thread already, but to tie it all together, his 2010s-onwards career is basically a mix of carrying uninteresting but mechanically capable workers to the best work of their career and having better than average but incosequential modern japanese wrestling matches that are very much immersed in the contemporary style. If you want to be fair to Akiyama, don't ignore his great work in recent years, but he's definitely not a Hashimoto/Tenryu match where you're gonna get the same Akiyama that turned Kento Miyahara into a legitimate main eventer in something like two tags and one singles match in some random tag, or even singles match, or even a singles match that may be of higher profile. Judging it from the perspective of how good his shtick is (which would translate to how good matches with his uninspired performances are), I thin Rolling Savate Sano is much better than him. But, if you want to be *really* fair to him, watching random early 2000s NOAH tags is exactly where his case lies. That's where he shined as a complete main event character, and if you were to take one period of him as much watch, it's much more telling of what he was capable of and how he operated as a prime worker than 90s All Japan or his old man run.

I don't want to waste time on canonical candidates, but the idea Misawa didn't have "great matches" as an older worker is just silly. Just in his last title run you have matches vs Marufuji, KENTA, Taue, Sano and Morishima that have had that rep. Honestly I'm not convinced Kobashi has a bigger resume of quality singles matches in NOAH. If you're looking for weak spots, I think the idea he didn't "click" (i.e. find the solutions to work a match under the right dynamic) with everyone as he got older is much more fair. But I would punish him more for having a lackluster match with Rikioh than I would any of the matches mentioned, because that's when he absolutely should've performed. Nothing's gonna happen if you have a mid match with 2002 Chono, unless he's facing Hashimoto I'm not getting my hopes up. And honestly any good work he produced in 2008-2009 should probably count x2 considering Morishima nearly killed him in 2007.

I'm torn on Suzuki. On one hand just being a Pancrase founder that had good work in UWF2 and PWFG should be alone for him to make my list. In his later career it's clear he has developed a unique mind for crafting matches that can result in true epicness: when watching something like the two matches he had vs. Katsuhiko Nakajima in 2016 or the infamous Tanahashi match you get a feel for what he is capable of. On the other hand, he spent such a big part of his late career playing a clown I almost want to disqualify him so my list doesn't have "uwu murder grandpa" on it. The environment he worked in surely doesn't help: I remember one time watching some match he had vs. Okada that wasn't even that revered, where it looked clear to me that if he was facing just someone competent in pro wrestling basics, literally just take an old school New Japan name: Osamu Kido, Kengo Kimura, whomever; the match would've been a classic. Instead Suzuki would do great work for a couple of minutes and Okada would do something dumb and I'd just wonder I even bothered watching the match in the first place.

It truly is. An absolutely epic match, and a great performance by Fujinami too! It's also the only spectacular performance I ever saw from 90s Fujinami that I would put on the same level he performed at before the injury. The 94 Hashimoto match is great, but the amount of matches Hashimoto had that are around that quality or even better makes it hard to really put is as a feather in injured Fujinami's cap. If you look at Fujinami's post-prime stuff, it's not like he suddenly forgot how to work, but I think it's clear he's not performing on the level he once was. "He had some good matches here and there" is a nice thing for me to say about Mutoh or Chono. It's hardly a compliment to Fujinami when I compare it to his previous work. Now that I think about it, Fujinami is probably a worker whom I like more the earlier he was in his career. His junior run was absolutely phenomenal: if he had a longer run like that, he'd probably have finished as my #1 in the last poll.

I'm ambivalent. I've been watching some 70s All Japan lately and it seems pretty clear to me he wasn't as good as I remembered him to be from watching the big time singles matches from around that time. But even so he'll sometime show some nice fire so I'm not terribly down on that stuff even if I don't hold super rookie Jumbo in the same esteem as I used to. Early 80s Jumbo I could do without. For all the talk about how much it took Tenryu to put things together, Tenryu feels like Tenryu earlier to me than Jumbo does. From about 1988 to until his body could follow him, he's as good as anyone in the world, and just an elite, elite pro wrestler. So he'll rank somewhere for me but his placement is not a priority.

Kim Duk Kintaro Oki's fellow Korean tag team partner is someone whom I'd never heard get hyped, but almost instantly impressed me. From what I've seen he works as a very capable worker laying his stuff in nicely, with him and Oki basically inventing W.A.R. wrestling by working these hateful chaotic brawls. If you want a summary of what he's about, there's a 4 minute clip of him wrestling Wahoo McDaniel where he absolutely goes toe to toe with him. vs Rusher Kimura-IWE 25.11.1978. w/Kintaro Oki vs Rusher Kimura & Great Kusatsu-AJPW 14.12.1977. w/Kintaro Oki vs Giant Baba & Jumbo Tsuruta & Giant Baba-AJPW 28.10.1976. Kendo Kashin „Kashin is just a troll“. „He sucks“. „He was booed at an ROH show in 2004 once“. This is what I learned growing up reading through the archives of the prowres interwebs. Actually watching the footage, you see he has a cool mask and a catchy theme song. Ok, a good start. Then I watched him tap out Masayuki Naruse in half a minute with a Flying Armbar. I like Flying Armbars. I kept watching his stuff, I kept enjoying it, and by the time I saw him carry clueless Yuma Aoyagi to a really fun match I could safely conclude conventional e-wisdom was wrong and Kendo Kashin does in fact rule. He really is a troll though, but it's part of the charm. vs Shinjiro Ohtani-NJPW 8.12.1997. vs Kazuo Yamazaki 3.5.1997. vs Kenoh-NOAH 7.3.2021. Tadao Yasuda The alleged „worst IWGP champion in history“, Yasuda is another wrestler I was supposed to dislike but then I actually watched his matches and it turned out he was quite good. Coward shooter is one of the more unique gimmicks you're gonna find in wrestling, but even before then he knew how to use his strong points like clinching and sumo offence to create meaningful focal points around which to build matches. vs Naoya Ogawa-Inoki Bom-Ba-Ye 31.12.2000. vs Yuji Nagata-NJPW 16.2.2002. vs Shinsuke Nakamura-NJPW 14.8.2003.

Greatest of all time.

I'll make a proper case for Kintaro Oki eventually, but everyone should watch the Oki-Baba singles match. If at this point in my fandom I didn't consider a match worked around Oki not being tall enough to Headbutt Baba a classic, I'd just write myself off as a heartless bastard. It really is the quintessential "less is more" match. To focus more on Baba, he's really someone that's grown a lot on me. Some of that is just me changing my perspective on things with age and appreciating what he did more, some of it is seeing certain matches where it just clicked with me, but he's really become a favourite now. An interesting thought that popped up to me recently was: watching more of his JWA stuff (him and Inoki are basically my favourite tag team now) where he'd do more, I think you can somewhat see how he allowed the All Japan style to eventually shift in the direction it did.

Mile Zrno The greatest Croatian wrestler ever! A real standout on the European scene of his time, Zrno was a proficient technician who perfectly blended athleticism with matwork prowess, using both to create flashy, yet logical and sensible transitions from regular holds. Along with that, he also had snug striking offence and could easily ramp up the intensity of a match. vs Ashura Hara-IWE 6.5.1979. vs Charly Verhulst-CWA 12.7.1980. vs Franz Schumann-CCC 8.2.1998.

I think Hansen's work primarily lies in how much stock you put into his tag work. As a tag worker, he really is in contention for the greatest to have ever done it, and just brings an unparalleled chaotic energy. As a singles worker.....eh. So-so. He's hardly the most consistent one and there's plenty of matches where a guy will just work over his arm a bit and they'll do some stuff and then Hansen will go over and I could have done without ever watching it.

Sugiura as a later bloomer is only true in as much as he had his debut when he was nearly 31. From what I recall he's a solid-good worker pretty much from the get-go, and started developing himself as a main event talent from 2007, culminating in a great 2009 (which coincided with his championship push). If you think the work he's put on in the last 5-6 years is as good as what he was doing from about 2007-2013, you have a much different perspective than me (and this is without going into his junior run at all, which had plenty of praised matches). I will say I have really enjoyed some recent tags he has had with Sakuraba, but to me it feels as that's more of a case of a tag setting being way better at keeping the current NOAH style from falling apart than anything Sugiura has done himself. In a singles setting, he's pretty much been doing what he was 10 years ago, just with less fire and creativity. But what he was doing 10 years ago was great.

Kintaro Oki I'm reserving judgement on what caliber of a worker he was in a comparative and historical sense, but I can say he is an absolute lock for my list. If you like workers in the Choshu tradition (like Kensuke Sasaki, Ishii or the BJW strong guys), Tenryu and the W.A.R. style, Fit Finlay, or even older workers Johnny Valentine and Wahoo McDaniel, I think you absolutely owe it to yourself to check out his work and give him a shot. His tight style and brawling attract immediate attention, but he is a skilled matworker too. Plus, how can you dislike a wrestler who worked a gimmick based on how hard his head was? vs Nick Kosak-JWA 6.12.1967 vs Tom Andrews-JWA 5.4.1969. vs Inoki-NJPW 10.10.1974.

If I were making a list based purely on whose presence makes me want to check a match out, he'd probably be my #1. I don't know if that's where he'll finish, but I can't envision my top 10 without him. He just bring an aura of violence with him that appeals to me so much, that even if comparatively someone like say Ikeda might have a stiffer match, the aura of Fujita makes his stuff stick out more. Being a legitimately skilled fighter who nearly KO'd Fedor probably doesn't hurt his perception in that regard. Obviously the bulk of Fujita's case is going to come down to what you think of his main event run. If you can't stomach Inokiism-era New Japan and subscribe to the theory it's all rubbish, it won't matter much how good you think his earlier work as more of an amateur wrestler is or whether he had good matches in IGF. I will say though, while it hasn't been the convincing factor for me (nor do I think it will be for others) in forming this opinion, his recent NOAH run has confirmed everything good I thought about him and really cemented my opinion on him. Even in a post-modern environment (and a pandemic one to add to that), he has continued to produce engaging, unique and special work. Some match recommendations: vs Kensuke Sasaki-NJPW 8.10.2001. vs Masahito Kakihara-NJPW 8.10.2002. vs Hiroshi Tanahashi-NJPW 5.6.2004. vs Katsuyori Shibata-NJPW 19.7.2004. w/Daisuke Sekimoto vs Suwama & Yuji Okabayashi-Tenryu Project 15.11.2015. vs Yoshiki Inamura-NOAH 16.9.2019. vs Shuhei Taniguchi-NOAH 2.11.2019. There's more I could add but if these don't pique your interest, additional recs probably won't change your mind either.

I'm hardly his best friend but reading through this thread Parv is one of the rare people who have brought up some interesting points and observations about the project as a whole. Pretty much 90% of discussion is just naming workers and going "I'm gonna have wrestler x at ranking y", and some of it in a pretty provoking manner where a fan of wrestler x could easily start a shitstorm that would derail the thread. His tone seems polite enough, and honestly, was one of the better behaved ones in *this* thread. Cultivate your own garden folks.

The most important idea I can think of is to have everyone who was in the discussion in 2016 automatically nominated again, preferably with a link to their 2016 thread. Hopefully there's someone smart enough around here to figure out how to automate that process (at least just the thread creation) so it doesn't amount to hours of manual work. I think this is important because the point of the process is to be inclusive, and the nomination process serves as the bare minimum test of if someone was actually a wrestler with a couple of matches on tape. To that point, I think the nomination system last time was fine, but this time I think just providing proof someone has several matches on tape should be enough for them to be nominated. I don't think forcing someone to write reviews does anything (except potentially burn someone's enthusiasm for the project), and if someone truly cares about spreading positive propaganda about a worker they're not gonna be able to do so efficiently without making a good case for them anyway.

For so long NOAH just seemed to turn into a shadow of the shadow of its former self. For an actually thought provoking match which you could (and should) absolutely argue pushes pro wrestling as a medium to happen there is surprising in a good way, and interestingly enough, they didn't need technological props to get post-modern. A long staredown was enough. It's really a testament to who and what Fujita is as a worker, because he absolutely carried this match. From his mannerisms, his shit talking, the straight up wacky stuff he did to the brutality (the pimp hand is still strong) you expect from him in a world title match. Fujita is such a personality that it doesn't seem *that* silly to watch him try and push Go Shiozaki off the balcony or for him to call an elevator while beating Go up. I barely watch fake fighting these days and seeing rope pushing and shoulder blocks probably does more to remind me of the absurdity of what I'm watching. It speaks to the strength of Fujita's character that he managed to do that because I can't imagine, say, watching Minoru Suzuki brawl around the stands and doing the aforementioned without turning the video off and rewatching the finish of the Semmy Schilt fight instead. Go was ok. He wasn't tasked with much. Just had to get his ass kicked and portray a stereotypical choplariat wrestler. I wish he was skilled enough in groundfighting so that Fujita didn't have to put himself into closed guard because Go had no idea what to do. Outside of that, he didn't get in the way of Fujita's performance much, and I vastly prefer the route they took in incorporating matwork where Fujita would just get on top and put on Wrestling/Judo Pins than say if they had compromised it so Go could get some stuff in. I'm not putting a numerical value on it. It was definitely unique, memorable, and, quite frankly-great.

So, how about that Cody Rhodes huh.

God, sometimes I forget how good Nagata was before he became a gimmick wrestler. I’m sure making goofy faces, turning his eyes white and finding a couple of spots to recycle in every match made his life a lot easier, but I definitely don’t consider it as creatively interesting as his early 2000s work. This match isn’t without flaws-at one point you see Nagata do a wacky Release German Suplex before going for a lame leg hook pin, and on the “is this something Inoki would do” scale this gets a stern no. He’d either hit a perfect bridge on that damn Suplex or work the (not huge but still ostensibly present) size difference into the match and opting for a Cradle pin or a Takedown instead. But, the roughness is what gives this match its charm, and Inokiism bring a wonderful pastiche of wacky pro wrestling and MMA really unique to wrestling history, even compared to other “shooty” styles. Yasuda is a former rikishi and thus has an advantage in the clinch, they are about evenly matched on the ground but Nagata possesses a wider array of joint locks Yasuda is just a brute who’s going to put his forearm in Nagata’s throat and go for simple chokes. This dichotomy is present on their feet too although there Nagata’s finesse in kicking techniques helps him prevail over Yasuda’s roughhouseness. Whether you call it genius wrestling storytelling or a simple dedication to identities of wrestling characters-it’s really cool to see Nagata throw lame forearms and get punched out for all he’s good only to realise his only solution is to revere back to his kicking, it’s such a breath of frash air to see something like struggle over underhooks and overhooks and Yasuda blocking Nagata’s Belly To Belly by grabbing his hooks and just steamrolling him into the corner. You get Nagata preying on in an S mount, PRIDE-esque grounded knees and Tiger Drivers and a wacky Indian Deathlock/Figure 4/whatever Nagata Lock I is supposed to be and the internal logic of the match remains consistent, because they are merely (a very visually pleasing, which is very important in a performance art!) substance, the form is what drives this to excellence. ****1/4

Punk might be a legit blue belt in kimono grappling for all we know, but that's a totally different experience than grappling in shorts, which again is different than grappling with gloves and with striking allowed.

Speaking of the Russian Legsweep, one of my biggest wrestling bubble burst moments was finding out it's actually extremely cool and also dangerous and banned in Judo: Well, I don't remember Baba's Legsweep looking anything like Uki Waza, could just be a neologism or the meaning of the name shifting like it did in Uranage with Hase.