El McKell

I had never seen this until just now and the first half of it might be the best first half of a match I've ever seen in my life. This is an incredible performance from Dragon, I love all the limbwork, I love him doing an atomic drop after a fan calls him Bob Backlund, I love how much of a vicious prick he comes off as. I think with a babyface on the other side showing more fire and a crowd that wasn't exhausted from seeing a show that had already gone over 4 hours and included that Dragon Gate trios match this could easily have been a 5 star match. ****3/4

FIFY. In all seriousness though, this will hopefully lead to some really good matches. I'm sure Claudio will be in it too anyway. I have no idea what they're going to do with this "triple crown" belt and if it means ROH won't have a champion anymore? Interference will not be tolerated is pretty funny because it implies it's allowed in the other matches on the show.

Because TV stations in places that have their own local wrestling probably aren't going to be very interested in airing wrestling from overseas, local wrestling in the US or Japan is going to have a much stronger audience than British wrestling so a TV station won't want to pay for it. If you're going to charge for it, I think only TV stations in places without wrestling scenes of their own will buy it

The simple fact is the people who say that are people who like Ishii matches much more than they like matches from any of those people.

Casas celebrating winning the second fall by climbing up to the second turnbuckle, playing an imaginary harmonica and throwing it into the crowd was weird as hell

Wouldn't Giant Baba be on the same level as the Beauty Pair for that? Anyway they should be in, it's very weird that Jackie Sato went in with the initial class without Maki to me.

I'd rank Kerry significantly better than Magnum, I can see the similarities in their cases though obvvously. Neither of them are exactly the kind of wrestler I'd be voting for, but I think Kerry has a lot more meat on the bone than Magnum not just in terms of volume of good matches but also in doing things that feel more varied to me, every good Magnum match feels like he's doing pretty similar stuff in them.

I kind of hate ladder matches at this point so maybe I'm off base here, but I just watched the Ladder War against the Briscoes and thought it was full of some of my least favourite ladder match tropes and definitely worse than than the 2/3 falls match and the Boston Street Fight the two teams had had in the preceding month. Kevin Steen is obviously excellent though he brings so much personality to his indie work, I love the character. I think he may spend too much time in brawls setting up complicated plunder and not enough beating the shit out of people sometimes, but overall he's great. The mask vs career match against Generico from Final Battle 2010 is legit a top 25 match all time for me. And he's definitely been good in WWE for the majority of his time there.

A match that truly abandons all logic and having a narrative and only focuses on being exciting ***3/4

I love the absolute chaos factor of this, it's Muta Muta-ing to the true best of his ability when it comes to making the thing feel violent and unique. But also fuck Muta for just casually getting up and walking off like nothing happened and he's fine after getting pinned

Hansen completely fucks up here and they can all just improvise perfectly and nobody misses a beat at all, I really appreciate that a lot.

A take that aged like a fine milk

This is absolutely how I've felt every single time I saw him live, there's something special about seeing him do this crazy stuff both so gracefully & impactfully that I don't think other wrestlers I've seen in person match.

Excluding the 2 pre-NJPW matches Control gave when they nominated him I could give you: w/KENTA vs. Naomichi Marufuji & Ricky Marvin 27/09/08 w/Jun Akiyama vs Kensuke Sasaki & Kota Ibushi 11/02/09 vs Kotaro Suzuki 21/03/11 vs Daisuke Harada 08/03/14 vs Hajime Ohara 07/01/17

A rare instance of someone who I think has made his case worse since 2016. The cool babyface new japan junior stuff is so long since faded in my memory replaced with complete mediocrity in WWE despite being given so much opportunity while there to stand out and be something.

He said in his rant that if they have any issues with him his door is open to talk about it, they brought a HR person and went to his locker room. I don't see them doing this as wrong at all

There's like 10 people I've done a little look at while watching stuff for this project who are not nominated. And I'm gonna nominate 4 of 'em, although it's unlikely I'll vote for any of 'em Michel Saulnier A tiny man, a technical wizard, more fun for me to watch than any of the old French heavyweights. I like that he can be this kind of base or whatever in the matches against Le Petit Prince where he grounds his opponent but he also gets to show one of the most athletic wrestlers in his place and time in other matches. Michel Saulnier vs Jo Marconville (1959/12/11) Michel Saulnier vs Jean Rabut (1965/06/20) Michel Saulnier vs Le Petit Prince (1967/09/30) & (1969/04/10) Pentagon Jr Shocked nobody has nominated him yet and someone's gotta want to vote for him. Got himself super over in Lucha Underground with his personality and aura. Always carries himself like he's a star even when he's mired in mediocre booking. Not as spectacular as his brother, but still pretty adept at doing cool shit. In his best bloody/violent stuff he comes across really dangerous. vs Kairi Hojo, Mayu Iwatani & Io Shiari Lucha Underground - Season 3 Episode 13 vs Kenny Omega All In 2019 w/Fenix vs Young Bucks All Out 2021 vs Villano IV Mas vs Mask in 2022 TJ Perkins Someone with a sneaky good long career, pretty good in early PWG, Evolve, peak early 2010s PWG, probably the 2nd best guy in the cruiserweight classic (which for my money is one of the best things WWE ever produced), quite a few sporadic really good Impact matches, and then a really good Best of the Super Juniors this year. vs Kyle O'Reilly 2013/08/09 vs Kota Ibushi Cruiserweight Classic vs Gran Metalik Cruiserweight Classic vs Josh Alexander Iron Man 2021/06/03 vs Hiromu Takahashi 2023/05/19 Lance Archer He's better at presenting himself as a monster than really any other big man going today. He made his AEW dark squashes entertaining, he's good at making his opponents look good, and it's funny as hell that way back in 2005 he was super over in the Impact Zone because he went out drinking with the fans. vs AJ Styles 2014/08/03 vs Will Ospreay 2019/07/06 vs Adam Page 2022/02/10 vs Warlow 2022/04/27 I have also looked at Hikaru Shida, Dave Bond, Skayde, Sumie Sakai, Taz & Yuko Miyamoto. But I'm not gonna nominate any of them unless someone wants to see them in the nominees and doesn't want to bother doing the little write up

I really don't agree with this sentiment, seeing all but one of his OTT matches live i can say i think ***3/4 might have been the floor with the Osprey match being a ****1/2 star affair. There's no lack of focus with these for me with a clear booking plan in place for him, being the 1st person to pin Devlin in 2 years, winning the belt, beating Starr, losing it back to Devlin & being a key part of the reason for Starr's turn on Devlin. Expertly booked stuff with Walter playing his role perfectly and having several great matches (devlin's best matches), shame that it included a pair of guys who abused women but that's not WALTER's fault

well, I guess I've gotta watch that 1982 match & try to find that Chief Big Heart match

I included Buddy Rogers on my 2016 ballot but I've changed my mind on how many matches I need to see to rank someone and there's legit just not enough Nature Boy matches out there for me to include him. He's so so good in everything I've seen, but I'm setting an absolute 10 match minimum for myself, which isn't a high bar but there's not enough there for him to clear it.

I love that that match vs Akito is just thrown into the match recommendation list without any context or explanation, I hope someone watches it not know what they're getting into. In fact here's the embed for anyone who wants to:

There's something sad for me about someone like Alex Shelley who I've always had a positive opinion of, who watching more of them for this has only improved my opinion of but I know that there is no way I can put them in my top 100

After really enjoying the MITB main event, my god was the Roman-Jey match on this show really really bad

I dunno if 'sex pest' is the word I'd use for someone who threw a bunch of punches into the thighs of someone he had some kinda friends with benefits situation with.

That pin attempt does rule & that match was my favourite Solar match that I watched. My problem is less in the fact that the actual moves don't look plausible (neither does something as basic running the ropes, wrestling is full of that kind of thing) but especially in the Solar-Negro Navarro matches but in plenty of other stuff too, I'll see a weird submission and rather than any kind of escape attempt or anything the guy applying it just lets his opponent go. I can't turn my brain off for that I'm sorry to say because it just creates the impression that nobody's seriously trying to win; this is a similar problem to what I have with a lot of ladder matches from the past 15 years or so.