benjaminkicks

I'll be doing only the latter. I'll have to watch this later in the week.Go Hawks! Another Seahawks fan in this deep hole of the internet? Hell yes, go Hawks!

I'll be attempting to watch the show while simultaneously watching the Seahawks game. We'll see how that goes.

I've been watching some mid-2000's WWE in the Network lately, and I think Jericho was pretty great in the few years before his first hiatus. He had a lot of really good, underrated performances in '03, '04, and '05. Just watched his SummerSlam '05 match with Cena and thought it was really good.

Going from memory, I really can't stand anything WCW was doing in '95. It wasn't a very good year for the WWF either, but at least there were a few bright spots.

Oooo, Jericho / Rock from No Mercy 2001 I remember being fantastic... come on Jerry! Their match at Royal Rumble 2002 is also great. They had some good chemistry in the ring.

Anyone else planning on putting Akira Taue in their top 15? I have him sitting in the #10-#15 range right now.

I assume Shinya Hashimoto will be under consideration after you do this then. Was shocked to not see him on your list before I read that. He seems like a guy you might enjoy.

I had Bayley (two "Y"s, people) vs. Sasha at ****, which I consider great, but it was shy of being a MOTYC for me. I'm not surprised that people loved it, but it didn't connect on that level for me, and I consider myself a pretty big Bayley fan. I'll most likely give it a rewatch before the year is over, because I think it might grow on me during a second viewing.

Masato Tanaka, Batista, Meiko Satomura, possibly AJ Styles and KENTA.

Agreed completely. I think I have him sitting around the 12 or 13 spot right now, with real possibility of moving higher. Probably above Kobashi for me as well.

I would add Shibata vs. Styles and Tanahashi as well.

Didn't even now about this thread until just now, but I'm still a relatively new member of this forum, so I figure I'd give one of these intro posts a go. Not much to tell really. My name is Ben, I'm 21 years old, and I live in a small town outside of Seattle. My interests include movies, music, cartoons, comic books, video games, sports, smoking weed, and watching wrestling. I am somewhat of an amateur writer, both fiction and non fiction, and hope to make a living writing someday. Wrestling likes: pretty much everything All Japan, late 80's/early 90's NWA/WCW, '96-'97 WWF, mid-2000's Ring of Honor, prime NOAH, modern New Japan, modern Joshi, Zero1 Wrestling dislikes: Hulkamania-era WWF, Hulk Hogan, the Attitude Era, Lucha Some of my favorite wrestlers: Terry Funk, Toshiaki Kawada, Shinya Hashimoto, Ric Flair, Daniel Bryan

I just liked Hojo acting pretty desparate to get the win in this one, which I think was building off their recent encounters. Hojo lost their match at Fortune Dream in December, but she grew a lot in between that and the June match (becoming champ and all), so maybe she thought she could take this veteran down. She couldn't, but she didn't lose, so she thinks that she knows enough about Meiko to win a rematch, which she readily accepts. But it turns out that it was Meiko, not Hojo, who only needed a rematch to win, and in resounding fashion no less. It gets me excited for the rematch of the rematch now, and see when Hojo can finally overcome Meiko and (hopefully) win her title back. I was enjoying Kairi's reign as well, and hope to see her as champ again soon. And in really liked all the work done in the match as well. Felt very intense to me, lots of brutal strikes and whatnot. Not sure if it was better than the June match, but I'm never the biggest fan of time limit draws in general, no matter how good they are, so I'm kinda naturally inclined towards the one with a decisive finish.

I think the body of the June match might have been stronger, but this one ultimately left me more satisfied, probably because of the finish. I thought it did a great job of telling a story that built off the June match. Really enjoyed both though. Meiko is having a great year so far. Also, holy shit, Meiko reversing Hojo's elbow drop into a cross armbreaker was just fantastic.

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/k1gYqBgXyMCt9xciZh0 Just found the recent 7/26 Hojo/Satomura World of Stardom Championship match online. It's worth checking out, much better than that Fortune Dream match of theirs linked above. Meiko puts in a very good performance.

Christian Rey Mysterio

I try not to fall on either side of the "peak vs. career" thing, because I think it's a case by case basis depending on the wrestler. That said, I do tend to value longevity in a wrestler a lot, because that simply means a higher quantity of quality work. Pretty much everyone I think will be making my list at this point has about at least 8 or so years of quality work that I enjoy.

The Hojo Stardom title match from June is a lot better than their Fortune Dream match. It's one of my favorite matches of the year so far. And sidenote, I think Hojo is pretty good. She's having an awesome run of good matches this year.

10 years is the barometer I've often been using when trying to decide on where to rank guys. I figure if a guy is very good, great, or excellent (or some combination of the three) for at least a 10 year period, then they deserve some serious consideration. I'm trying to think of guys who have less than 10 years of solid stuff. Lesnar maybe? He's not a lock yet, but I think he'll be somewhere on my final list. I'm trying to formulate an argument for Batista, but he only really has about 5 years of prime stuff. Not sure if he'll end up making it, as much as I want him to.

I should say that at this point I think Meiko has been no less than like a top 15 worker in the world for many years now. She's fucking great, but modern Joshi isn't something a lot of people seem to watch or care about. I think she's the first worker that I've been exposed to solely because of this project, and that I think is and should be a slam dunk for a place on this list.

I've seen most of these in the last few days, I would agree with this list. Good stuff there. That first Hojo match is just a taste of their must-see Stardom title match from June. It's one of my favorite matches this year, but sadly and as you said, I can no longer find it on the web. And they just had a rematch a few days ago, which I'm sure is excellent, but I haven't seen it online yet.

I'm interested to see how you feel about the '01 match with Satomura, if you get to it.

I've been bingeing on Meiko Satomura matches today, and I just watched her '01 match with Hokuto. Really great match, and Hokuto was awesome in it. I look forward to check out more stuff from her peak.

That's interesting. I've seen quite a bit Tanaka matches over the years and I've never really considered him to be a particularly formulaic wrestler.

Joe Lanza had some words of praise for Tanaka on the latest Voices of Wrestling podcast that I totally agree with. He basically talks about Tanaka being a guy who always delivers and has an awesome body of work. Joe also claims that Tanaka would most likely be close to or in his top 20 if he made a ballot. I'm right there with him on all that, and if Joe doesn't end up spending in a ballot I will most likely be the high vote for Tanaka. He's at least a top 30 guy for me at this point. (You can listen to Joe talk about it here: http://www.voicesofwrestling.com/2015/07/22/wwe-battleground-kobe-world-g1-climax-more/ at around 41:30)