El McKell

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

I cannot think of a sloppier match that I've seen in an AJPW ring, Dr Death and Yatsu both fucking sucked here.

Sorry if this is weird and mods delete this thread if this is bad etiquette but this video showed up my youtube recommendations and i'm not sure but I think it's Parv/Jerry Von Kramer. Can someone confirm if I'm imagining things or if it's him? Thomas Hobbes's Argument For Absolute Monarchy

Going to be in New York for this, going to NXT & MSG and those are looking like the on paper best shows, with NXT clearly looking better. The Wrestlecon supershow probably be very enjoyable too, with Bandido-Osprey and Cavernario-Dragon Lee. And if anyone wants two tickets to the Friday night Janella show hit me up in the DMs. The friend i'm going with bought them before the NXT show got announced as being at the same time.

If a very good match with a dead crowd is something you don't mind watching I'd say check out this Kana & Nanae Takahashi vs Natsuki Taiyo & Ray match: https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x4ha1qm

How many people voted for or against Jake without thinking about his AAA run? I feel like for such an insanely hot, albeit short, run it gets overlooked but maybe i'm mistaken on that

He's gone in like May

Maybe I'm off base here but if we're still on this, now it's not even the Nia vs Rousey match that I though was best this year. Their match at TLC was better.

L.A. Park, Jerry Jarrett, Jimmy Hart, Bill Apter, Howard Finkel, Gary Hart and Yuji Nagata are all in. So not a real fix for the Lucha logjam. 5 non wrestlers was unexpected