GOTNW

Where are all the great Akebono matches and performances? The one Miyahara match? Akiyama carrying him in the Oudou Tournament Final? Shuji Ishikawa carrying him whenever it was they faced off? HIm doing a cool back body drop in the Tenryu 6 man? Him completely shitting the bed in the Champion Carnival final vs Suwama where they both looked like they were barely trained? The Joe Doering Champion Carnival match where they spent half the match on the outside doing nothing even though it was super short? You had a much stronger argument for Titus O'Neil whenever that was. I like Akebono as a base and his physical limitations can provide an interesting dynamic to matches but I'm not seeing where the idea he is this great worker comes from other than you jumping the shark.

The Akebono match was fun but it wasn't even as good as the match he had vs. Yuji Hino earlier that night. I'd strongly recommend his match from the Champion Carnival Finals vs Miyahara, not a MOTYC or anything but a very good match that plays off their match from last year.

Akebono as a top 20 wrestler is insane. Is that list supposed to be in order? Him being so much higher than Miyahara is jarring. If I were doing a WKO-esque 2015 top twenty it would probably look something like this (no order to it btw): Dragon Lee Negro Casas Virus Kamaitachi Atlantis Pentagon Jr. Zack Sabre Jr. Roderick Strong Shuji Ishikawa Kota Ibushi Shinsuke Nakamura AJ Styles Brock Lesnar John Cena Tomohiro Ishii Meiko Satomura Chris Hero Mil Muertes Minoru Suzuki Shibata Roman Reigns Haven't watched BOLA yet and have seeen very little Evolve and zero Revolution Pro. Out of the WWE guys mentioned Cesaro, Harper and Neville have done very little for me. Should also note I'd strongly consider Bryan since I thought he was clearly the best wrestler in the world before the injury. edit: I could swear I typed out Akiyama's name but somehow he isn't here. Also forgot Ricochet existed. And now that I counted it again it looks like my list has 21 people. Oh well. It's late.

I don't think he has enough all time classics to make my top five, if he did he'd be a contender for #1. Honestly think his match vs Kobashi for the Triple Crown in 1998 is the best All Japan match from the 90s and possibly ever.

It says a lot about him that he could credibly incorporate "hip attacks" into his offence back when japanese wrestling wasn't filled with bullshit.

I doubt he put as much thought into it as he did into meetings with sponsors and similar stuff that came with being NOAH's president.

The TNA Ladder match vs. AJ Styles is one of Raven's best.

Perro Aguayo fucking rules. He reminds me of Rush in the sense he'll just chestslap, kick and stomp the shit out of someone, he's an amazing brawler and is also neat on the mat,really seems like an elite worker, he'll make my list for sure and his ranking will largely depend on how much of his stuff I can find.

I'm sure there have been plenty of matches without crowd heat you've enjoyed greatly. Don't see how that would be a problem in high end lucha really.

Are the grandma attending an Arena Mexico show and a Kerry Von Erich fangirl really that different? Wrestling is simple. Lucha submissions aren't any less goofy than WOS cartwheels. Dandy vs Pirata Morgan and Lawler vs Dundee use the same ideas. Ditto Casas/Santo (title match version) and Flair/Steamboat.

Lucha is very easy to get into if you don't come into it with preconceived notions about wrestling.

AKIRA MAEDA vs DUTCH MANTELL-UWF 11.4.1984. OH BOY HERE WE GO. I am sure this is a match that is very famous among pwo elders but I am young and inexperienced and had no idea it happened until today. I envisioned this as a shoot style blog but really I'll post anything that I can somehow connect to shoot style here and this was too bizarre for it to not end up here. I guess this blog's philosophy is closer to UWFi than it is to RINGS. This wasn't even a shoot style match but it took place in a (proto) shoot feud and that's a good enough excuse for me. First thing that stands out is how much Maeda looks like a blowjob babyface. Dutch's heel mannerisms in the beginning of the match were awesome, he was great at trolling Maeda, acting like a dick, throwing streamers at him etc. The crowd started chanting for random wrestlers in the middle of the match which was hilarious, exactly like the stuff you'd see at a post-wrestlemania raw, just without the part where they fuck everything up with dumb chants. This was worked at a very.......american style which the crowd totally rejected and the action was merely solid but you can't go wrong with a match in which you get both Maeda shoot kicking someone so hard it knocks them silly and an enraged japanese crowd.

...............man what the fuck happened?

It was pretty clear he hid the blade under the apron at Wrestlemania.

I made one enjoy my three shitposts per month.

They were doing the same thing last year with Chokibogun, though it wasn't nearly as bad. I wanted to like Sugiura-Suzuki but it completely bored me. I love strike exchanges but in order for them to work you have to sell eventually and they.........didn't. Nor did they bring any variety to them. They just traded elbows in the middle of the ring for twenty minuts. They hit each other really hard but I couldn't give two shits about it. I started liking the action as soon as they moved away from that but that was only the last few minutes.

I was hoping we'd get a Toyota-Germs comparison and am very disappointed now. (I love talking heads too but......come on)

I loved his matches vs. Yuji Hino and Akebono on the Finals show, is anything else out there?

What would be the upside of a yearly top 100 poll? I think 3-5 would be ideal. Enough time for the landscape to change but not that drastically.

I just decided I was going to do a proto-list which would include only people I was 100% behind and thought were surefire locks for making my list. It ended up having EXACTLY 100 people. This is going to be way easier than I thought it would be.

The Owen Hart Dungeon match was amazing but other than that his pro style work was completely lackluster and uneventful.

There are few things I love in wrestling as much as an old dude that stiffs the shit out of people paying no heed to their safety. He's someone I'd love to include if I can find enough footage to justify it.

Disappointed to see you'll be taking Cena out of your top 100. I think Makabe is a very good worker who gets unjustly shit on, mostly for ridiculous reasons and often times by people who don't or barely watch modern New Japan. When I first started paying attention to NewJa heavyweights 2k10 I thought he was solid but I didn't care for him much, mostly because "for a brawler" he didn't work stiff enough. But as I watched more my appreciation for him quickly grew. I don't even think of Makabe as a brawler anymore-he's primarily a shtick worker. His shtick is over, he's got good timing and crowd control and is very good at teasing and building up his finisher. Doubt he'd make my top 100 but I enjoy his formula and find an average Makabe performance a lot more entertaining than an average Tanahashi/Goto/Okada/Nagata/Kojima/whomever performance.

After reading years of criticism against him and pretty much everyone (even Alan!) turning on him........eh I still like him. He's too creative for his own good and some of his shit just doesn't work in practice but he can be a great foil for a variety of opponents and I like most of his goofy offence.

The Satomura/Hamada match that just popped up is pretty great: http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x39xbsc_ayako-hamada-vs-meiko-satomura-in-sendai-girls-on-10-11-15_tv