GOTNW

I'll publish my unranked proto-list in a few weeks for your amusement once I'm done with college stuff.

I remember reading somewhere (possibly here?) it was Fuchi.

I've also watched over 2000 wrestling matches this year(don't call me out Dylan or someone who did like 5X of that), a significant portion of which was focused on exploring new wrestlers. I thought Bret's matches vs. Austin (Wrestlemania edition), Owen (Wrestlemania edition) and DBS were great but I'll be leaving off plenty of people whom I both enjoy more and have a deeper resume of great matches. I think he also benefits a lot from being a WWE main eventer and one whose whole gimmick was basically "great wrestler".

Any apuesta matches other than the Dandy, Satanico and El Faraon ones I should check out? He's a weird guy, at his best he looks like the greatest lucha brawler ever but then there's matches where he'll look completely tamed. I have him below Perro and Sangre Chicana right now.

I like Bret but would much rather discuss stoicism in american wrestling than his work, Ditch had a great piece on why he doesn't think Bret is an elite worker on his old board, he won't rank for me, I found most of his big matches overrated and his work doesn't particularly captivate me.

Don't care much for him, he was certainly great mechanically and at his best could be a really good foil for superior workers but I really dislike both the philosophy behind his work and the fandom that surrounded him and unless I'm binge watching his opponents' work I have zero desire to watch his stuff. Will much rather rank someone who does less but actually displays some personality.

Amazing match and a great example of how underrated Ogawa is as a worker, he gets so much out of the simplest holds, creating struggle over them and always finding new ways to gain advantage, there are also neat details like Ogawa grabbing Misawa's hair to escape a headlock and MIsawa getting desperate after Ogawa dominated with him holds in the beginning and grabbing Ogawa's hair while locked in a Facelock, eventually they do more conventional All Japan action, the brawling here was neat, both Ogawa's punches and Misawa's Elbows looked great and Ogawa sold like he was being decapitated (which was very close to what was going on) and there were a couple of amazing All Japan kung-fu sequences of insane counters and they played up the difference in their positions in All Japan's hierarchy by being relatively reserved with nearfalls, the crowd didn't buy Ogawa as a threat but watching him bust out all sorts of wacky pinning combinations was amusing. Would probably have this over ****.

A fun match but not an all time classic or anything, really brought down by Jumbo's lackluster performance. Interesting opening with them teasing some bigger moves and stealing each other's signature stuff, the graplling wasn't much but there were some interesting holds, the matchw was really made by them smacking the shit out of each other. I really dislike the way Jumbo sells immediate impact, it feels like something I'd see from a modern indy guy and all I can think of when he does are countless debates about limbwork on DVDVR re: Tanahashi title matches from 2009, I think it's overly expressive for japanese wrestling and don't think it enhances the match in any way. The big bombs were fun but the nearfalls on them weren't very convincing (it was too obvious they were gonna go for rope breaks). On the other hand you get awesome stuff like Tenryu pulling out a surprise Small Package and a huge German Suplex, great, dramatic counters that got great pops. There was some legwork here but Jumbo didn't sell it at all, actually he reacted to it by doing a bunch of enzuigiris which felt totally out of character for him, it was interesting when he did it in the beginning of the match to tease Tenryu but by the time he did a third one I was completely sick of them. Finish was very interesting and dramatic though I do wish they hadn't done the legwork as it felt the finish was more of an end result of accumulated and a coincidence than the legwork finally coming into play. 3+ star-ish.

I believe Matt D once said he'd be interested to hear someone talk about storytelling in Volk Han matches so someone direct him here I loved their match from january but actually preferred this one. What really made it for me is the narrative, Tamura was cleary a bigger threat here than he was in the january match, he smacked Han with a couple of badass kicks that really rocked him, Han's stoic reactions to peril were great (and his selling style was perfect for it, it's really hard to express pain in a way it seems like you're trying to act like you're not bothered like it while you actually are and Han was amazing at it), Tamura recognizing Han's stoicism by keeping him in a full mount after a rope break to emphasise his dominance was great, Han trying to brush off Tamura's attacks while gradually weakening was even better, him trying to do so even after it was clear he was knocked down now was even better. Then you get Tamura reacting to Han's false bravado by just shoot kicking him in the ribs so hard he couldn't brush it off. The struggle for the final takedown was great and played off the size difference really well. Awesome, dramatic finish.

The Choshu matches from 83, his series vs Ryuma Go and the Maeda match from 1986 would be a good place to start with him.

I would extend Misawa's peak at least to 2003. I don't think he ever had a huge drop off in performance quality, just stopped booking himself in so many main event singles matches.

I binge watched a bunch of Tiger Mask II stuff recently and honestly thought it was great, sure it didn't have the depth of his 90s work but what does really? He had the benefit of Baba bringing in a who's who of great workers and really took full advantage of it. Thought his match vs. Shiro Koshinaka from the Lou Thesz Cup was awesome as well, it was really interesting to see him work such a stripped down style.

He's firmly entrenched as my #1.

I have him top 15 currently, I thought he was great since I first watched a match of his but he's someone who really benefits from constantly exceeding my expectations and always impressing regardless of the environment he's in, what I value most in wrestling is the kind of energetic performance charisma Choshu abounds with, I always love the idea of a Choshu match and the viewing experience delivers every time, he also gets a lot of bonus points for his wrestling philosophy which is what my taste has been moving towards for quite some time.

Jumbo will rank somewhere in the upper half of my list. He had an incredible peak but I'm ambivalent about his career outside of it and honestly the more I watch of him the less enamored I am with him.

Watched some 80s All Japan recently and he hasn't been very impressive, don't have much use for him outside of a pretty German (which he managed to fuck up in one of the most important matches of his career, lol). Doubt anyone would think he's a top 100 guy ever if he debuted twenty years later.

Let's not forget the nWo had it's own branch in Japan as well. New Japan has stables ride in the same buses and no one ever really breaks character. I'm not a fan of the americanization of the product but it hasn't affected how they present kayfabe at all.

I didn't think the matches themselves were that special honestly. In the case of the first match the post-match didn't ruin the experience for me but whereas a big match like that can use the post-match to significantly enhance my opinion of the match (Atlantis-La Sombra) there it just cemented it as being below my threshold for MOTYC matches. I'm not sure what more to add about the Ironman match really. It's hardly an "old school" mentality. It's not an issue in New Japan or CMLL or Lucha Underground.

It's what they did after the first match. Then they did the Dragonball storyline of the heel becoming good after losing to Goku/Bayley (both the post match and the build up to the second match seemed to indicate this) only for Sasha to turn again during the match and then turn back after the match. That's a lot closer to how TNA would book something than great narration. I don't think any of the hugging was supposed to be part of the storyline. It's just another example of a shoot moment the WWE has no problem showing in 2015 Why? See if they bothered to make a distinction between what's the "storyline" and what's not I could accept it. But they don't. Is twitter a vehicle for them to run storylines or can wrestlers act like actors on it? Wrestling has treated the post-match as a part of its sphere forever (this includes NXT too) and now they want to treat it like threater? It's an inconsequentialism on their part.

Right, but it's a stereotype in a niche where the idea of a female protagonist is fairly recent, and if it comes down to just copying cliches or combining cliches with negative stereotypes like "bitches be crazy" I'd much rather have them do the former.

Most of the audience who doesn't post on wrestling boards, I think, like Roman at this point, but yeah, this is one of the only places where I've seen that match acknowledged for being as good as it was. Most other places, Roman Reigns matches devolve into contests for whoever can post that Roman is gassed first.In the MOTYC thread on my local forum it's the match with the most yes votes and the match with the best overall score.

It's what they did after the first match. Then they did the Dragonball storyline of the heel becoming good after losing to Goku/Bayley (both the post match and the build up to the second match seemed to indicate this) only for Sasha to turn again during the match and then turn back after the match. That's a lot closer to how TNA would book something than great narration.

You could make a solid argument for this, but that's just not a character I'm going to care about.

But that really happened, and was real. It wasn't a planned spot. Sasha did it in the moment, and really made that girl cry. And it was great. It didn't matter in my viewing experience. The first match and the build up to the Iron(wo)man match ruined any chances of me caring about a face/heel dynamic in the rematch. You also have the little girl basically being presented as a character of her own on NXT shows so her being inserted into the match isn't that surprising.

The thing about the Sasha/Bayley matches is that I can't suspend my disbelief for them. It's one of the basic requirements I have for rating a wrestling match highly. The heeling on the kid isn't really that impressive when you have Sasha apologizing to her ASAP and the kid befriending her on twitter hours after the match.