El McKell

If it is who you think it is, they aren’t a troll they’re not insincere they were banned for being very rude to other members, name calling etc

They did make it clear it wasn’t a full match here. Although maybe it because it’s so short Elliot can complain, I dunno

oh shit Steven said the exact same thing but in less words

Yeah I know there's a ton of ways to structure a match that vary between different times and places. And that a wrestler can be good at some of them and bad at others. But without full matches I don't know how matches in the 30s are structured, what makes a good 30s match or a bad 30s match, so for me I find them impossible to rate

Or he could look like crap, it depends on which 3 matches you pick to trim down to 15 minutes and how they are edited

Well they look at them and see something good. What one person sees as good in wrestling is never going to perfectly align with what other people think is good. I feel like you can see from clips if someone has good execution but not really if they're good at putting together a match. I personally can't rate someone based on clips, I don't know how to rate a match if we only have half of it or less. How well you can gauge someone's quality by clips depends on what kind of aspects of wrestling are most important to you.

I wouldn't be interested in participating in a poll where we rank people with little footage based on that footage, but if people want to do it that's cool. But I really really don't want to see wrestlers removed from the regular GWE nominees because of it. I want myself and other voters to have the freedom to vote for who we think is best based on the footage we have and not be forbidden from voting for Buddy Rogers or whatever because he doesn't have 20 matches on tape.

Adam Cole Has a charisma and presence that gets him over wherever he goes. Despite the fact that he doesn’t seem to be spectacular enough to be a main eventer in PWG or (pre USA network) NXT he still has great matches in these environments. He’s not someone who doesn’t have longevity, he’s been at least pretty good for 10 years, and from near the beginning teaming with Kyle O’Reilly he knew how to be a dickhead heel that has this undercurrent of likeability. w/ Kyle O’Reilly vs Marty Scurll & Zack Sabre Jr WXW 03/13/2011 vs Kyle O’Reilly PWG 05/23/2014, go to 1hr 15 mins in that video for the match vs Johnny Gargano NXT 04/05/2019, go to 2hr 21mins 30secs in that video for the match

In the spirit of giving everyone a chance I watched 5 Abdullah Kobayashi matches. This is not for me. I watched a 2006 match with Takashi Sasaki that I actually enjoyed. It was structured like a 2010s indie main event but instead of increasingly spectacular bombs/athletic shit, it was increasingly ludicrous use of plunder. The next deathmatches I watched were a lot worse. A 2012 Ryuji Ito match that was like a worse version of the Sasaki match but once Abdullah got a syringe stuck through his cheek it was too much gore for me and I was covering my eyes. I was similarly grossed out by a Shuji Ishikawa match from 2010 where Abdullah’s back was so bloody I was praying for the match to just end so he could get medical help. In the non-deathmatch category I watched an okay walk-n-brawl against Daisuke Sekimoto in korakuen hall with some cool spots. And Abdullah teaming with Seikimoto against Kento Miyahara & Yuma Aoyagi from last years AJPW tag league in what is without a doubt the worst All Japan main event I’ve ever seen. Unfunny comedy from Abdullah, Sekimoto & Miyahara totally taking a night off, true garbage.

Made my list last time, dunno if I’ll fit him in this time, he has had the all time bad feud with Bray Wyatt since the last poll. But he does have great execution of moves, he does have great matches including the best singles matches in the careers of Mark Henry, Christian & Kane.

I think he's a pretty prototypical early 00s indie wrestler. Does cool spots, is often sloppy, wears bad ring gear. His flippy shit is better than most of his contemporaries and he's obviously very influencial but he doesn't know how to use the fact that he's tiny to illict sympathy properly. He won't make my list.

I agree with you that Nash is underrated, but I do not agree that he’s really good in 96 & 97 WCW

He's not very good, I can't imagine ranking him, but I wanna ask is him not being in the index of nominees a conspiracy against him?

Just gonna throw out my gut feelings on these pre-1980: The Destroyer. Makes everything he does entertaining, easily the best at talking during a match ever whether it's at the ref or his opponent. 1980-84: Terry Funk. This is the weakest half-decade in terms of quantity of good wrestling on tape, so maybe Terry has it easy here, but Lawler & Flair are contenders for this spot. 1985-89: Ric Flair. Putting on an unbelievable number of other people's best matches during this period 1990-94: Akira Hokuto. After this 5 year period she didn't wrestle that much, but during it she was so transcendently great 1995-99. Kenta Kobashi. My number 1 last time around, just slightly ahead of Misawa & Kawada during this period 2000-04. Kenta Kobashi. Kobashi's real peak, that NOAH championship run is the greatest title reign in the history of wrestling 2005-09. Shawn Michaels. I'm sure this my most controversial pick, but during this period he had all time classics with Cena, Undertaker, Angle & the wresltemania 20 main event. & I like melodramatic bullshit like the Flair retirement match 2010-2014. Hiroshi Tanahashi. He is literally just Shawn Michaels but working the modern NJPW style (which is just a development of 90s AJPW & 00s NOAH). Everything I like in wrestling stylistically, having one of the greatest series of matches ever with Okada 2015-2019. Probably Okada, I dunno

It's very difficult to compare these two guys, but to me that's entirely because we don't have enough footage of Johnny Valentine to know how good he is, I can't compare any wrestler to Johnny Valentine. If I don't have a couple of hours worth of complete matches I feel like any opinions I form are just total guesses.

Survival Tobita matches are funny and all, but why is it this opponent that grabs people the most? I think If we didn't call him such a funny name in English he probably wouldn't have gotten nominated, if his name had been translated properly on bootleg tapes as Ken the Wooden Man or Wooden Ken or whatever this thread wouldn't exist.

How do I get the motivation to get back into wrestling again to try to take part in this for 2026?

Dunno if this is worth posting but Jimmy Rave has had to have an arm amputaed and so his wrestling days are done. I know Dylan Hales liked him a lot I don't know how other people here felt about him. But definitely a talented guy in my eyes and it's really sad to hear about something like this happening to anyone

Daisuke Sekimoto isn't someone who'd come to my mind when asked a question like this, but yeah he's got a really substantial body of work of great tags

Cesaro is great, and is great at working tags is part of that. I don't see him as a top 10 tag team wrestler all time or anything though. I really think for the most part the wrestlers who are best at working tags are the best at putting on entertaining matches in general. Like the best tag worker ever for me might be Kenta Kobashi.

Shingo vs Ospreay is probably my pick right now. But yeah that Walter - Bate is a good shout. Maybe I'm insane or maybe being at the front of the crowd biased me but Mike Bailey vs David Starr from OTT a couple weeks ago is up there. Omega - Tanhashi from the dome too

The Kurt Anlge match from Summerslam '01, this doesn't really count as under the radar but please god include it

Last summer I went to Milton Keynes (the worst city in England) to see a Rev-Pro/NJPW co-promoted show. When I was getting the bus the next morning a pair of old women started talking to me, I mentioned that I had come here to see wrestling. One of them remembered the World of Sport stuff when it was on ITV, and upon talking a little bit about it I realised she thought that stuff was real, and I could not convince her otherwise

Sounded ridiculous to me but there's proof it exists:

Piledriving someone onto a wrench feels like a very strange move to me, like just hit him with the fucking wrench