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Lost my last soldier today, so here's my list. I remember in February or March thinking that there was no way I'd be able to make one. Top 100 workers: 29 Unique votes: 4 High votes, excluding unique votes: 14 Same placement on my list as on the overall list: 2 Lowest finish: Johnny Kincaid Highest finish: Ric Flair Nice spelling, asshole: Bran Pillman (great worker, even better source of fiber), Alan Sarjeant Tallest: Barry Windham (6'6") Shortest: Pierrothito (5'1") Birthplaces: Mexico 39, USA 35, England 8, Japan 6, Canada 4, Croatia 1, Hungary 1, Puerto Rico 1, Antigua 1, Scotland 1, Russia 1, Northern Ireland 1, Malta 1

6. Fuerza Guerrera 7. Bret Hart 8. Virus I had Bret way up there, way, way up there. It's better to be great for longer, and it's better to have more great matches than to have fewer. But in 2026 I think that it's clear that hidden gems and weekly disposable classics are a road to nowhere, and that the hardest thing to do in wrestling is craft a match that people remember years later, that people talk about years later, and that people care about years later. Bret's great matches changed the landscape of his promotion. I'm not talking about improving the overall workrate or anything but in the way he made guys like Austin and Bulldog. You could probably point to some great Bret matches that didn't really matter or that were forgotten shortly after they happened and needed to be rediscovered. Those are more the exception than the rule with him. He wasn't out there just trying to impress people. He wanted to hit the audience in the gut and accomplish something on a larger scale. Of course I'm an American dude in the second half of my thirties. I'm basically the perfect age for Bret Hart's greatness and importance to have been backbones of the formation of my pro wrestling knowledge.

I do think it's true that there isn't a lot of biting criticism of Mexican workers. It never really did develop an accepted set of understandings like '90s AJPW or WWE. A lot of fans don't have it on their radar, so people who do like it are gonna focus their efforts on building guys up. There's no widespread overpimping that would necessitate tearing anybody down, like with the backlash against Angle or Flair. That naturally leads to luchadores and lucha matches being treated like found money. Like, hey, Blue Panther's been having classics for almost half a century now, why would anyone care about some shitty match he had with Octagon, or some random 3v3 from over thirty years ago? I know that, to the extent anyone knew who I was, I got labeled as a pain in the ass for some of the stuff I said about Satanico. And goodness knows that reading Parvini on lucha used to drive me up a wall in my early days posting here. At the same time I don't know if people really talk that way anymore about anything. Back and forth debates and nitty bitty dissections were staples of message board interaction, but boards themselves are now relics. Today we mostly just surround ourselves with people and sources of information that aren't going to challenge our worldview. An argument is a bad thing to happen. For wrestling, is that really so bad? I mean, does anyone really want someone else taking apart a match they like jdw-style and having to defend why they like it? The other side of the coin, though, is that if all that matters to me is that I like something, and that's enough to make it great in my eyes, then there isn't really a discussion to be had. I'm using a standard that obviates anyone else's opinion, or any sort of objective measurement. I thought that the Mexican guys who made the top hundred were more or less predictable. No problems there. I don't know that much about Mistico, but he's hot right now and riding that momentum, and maybe he really is that good. Santo was a fine number one luchador. Of course I say that as someone who placed him in the top spot on my list. To me he's someone who could walk into any arena in the country and have a classic on any given night. That's not to say that he always did, but he has a remarkable number of great matches, and I don't think you'd ever call El Hijo del Santo a passenger. Chicana actually did have a badass match discovered in the past couple of years, but it just doesn't seem like one newly found match creates shockwaves anymore. I dunno.

Thanks, I appreciate it. I hope you do get into lucha and find plenty here to disagree with.

Okay, so here's how the Mexico based candidates shook out. Sorry for the lousy formatting and for any errors I made. Entering the top 100: Mistico Exiting the top 100: Atlantis, Sangre Chicana, Virus Holdovers who got their first votes: Hechicero, El Brazo, Javier Llanes, Chico Che, Arkangel New nominees who made the list: Pentagon Jr., Mascara Dorada, Dragon Lee, Hijo de Fishman, Volador Jr., Mr. Niebla, Texano, Pantera Surena, Villano V, Rambo, Herodes, Titan, Mr. Condor, Wotan, Signo, Marcela Made the list without being nominated: Blue Demon (not listed on the nominees page, and I don't know if this refers to Junior or Senior) Falling off the list: Cicloncito Ramirez (I don't believe he was actually nominated last time), Konnan Big New nominees who got no votes: Comando Negro, Dark Angel Zero votes both times: Kung Fu Biggest improvement: Mistico went from outside of the top 400 to a top 100 finish, but I think you gotta go with Hechicero, who got no votes last time and finished just outside of the top 200 this time Biggest improvement without adding to their case: Perro Aguayo Jr. Biggest decline: Emilio Charles made the top 200 last time, and this time he did not finish in the top half of the list

Jimmy Redman never browbeat anybody for not liking Cena enough or tore other wrestlers down to build Cena up. Her enthusiasm for him was pure and genuine, and I hope she still feels the same way wherever she may be. I'll try to do a Mexico postmortem some time tonight.

Whoa whoa whoa, all I said was that his audience didn't accept him. I'm not signing on for any more than that.

I never said that all he got was boos. My standard for a crowd connection for a babyface that the promotion is building itself around is a lot higher than "half the fans like him, I guess." This is a man playing the same role as Bruno, Hogan, Austin and Rock, for crying out loud. When those guys did spots in their matches that called for a pop, they got their pop. And it wasn't counteracted by half of the audience booing.

Then why are so many of them booing him in every match?

The elephant in the room with Cena, and I don't quite understand why it more or less goes ignored, is that he worked a style and played a role that demanded a genuine connection with the audience, and he just never had it. In a workrate driven style, you can still sit back and enjoy the action even if the crowd doesn't back the right wrestler. WWE main events are designed to build to huge pops based on how much the fans care about this guy. Take that away and the match loses a lot of its effect. Does anyone call Slaughter-Sheik a MOTDC with a dead crowd? Does anyone call it a MOTDC if the sound were missing? I suppose you could say that from a nuts and bolts standpoint Cena does the things that you want from an ace babyface, but without the intended reaction he might as well be, as they say, wrestling in a vacuum. It's not entirely his fault that they gave him the gimmicks of wannabe rapper and wannabe marine. I have no idea why anyone would cheer for either of those things, or why WWE thought that they would. On the other hand, wrestlers have gotten some pretty loony stuff over, just by having an authenticity that Cena always seemed to lack. Mick Foley as the crippled pianist, Matt Borne as the sadistic clown. I mean, going back to Slaughter, no one had any trouble buying him as a soldier. Okay, you know, once you reach the point where you're praising Sgt. Slaughter for stolen valor, it's probably time to pack it in.

That's Atlantis slapping the dog shit out of Shocker in Blue Panther's gif. I'll go ahead and count that as a top 100 finish for him. Hey, feel free to take credit for any of my late night rants, but I'm warning you right now that it's a losing strategy in the long run. Let me know if you'd also like to assume responsibility for my 3 AM credit card purchases.

Ah, my bete noire. I suppose I could be happy about a lucha candidate ranking this highly, but truth be told I always saw Satanico as more of an anti-lucha candidate. Satanico matches rarely leave anyone praising his opponent or looking forward to exploring more from that person, or just more lucha in general. When a Satanico match isn't good enough, then it could only be because his opponent wasn't good enough. When a Satanico match is too good, then a masterpiece like that could only be a Satanico carryjob. I've read Satanico praise that presents him on a level above the rest of his countrymen. I've read criticism of great luchadores for not wrestling enough like Satanico. So much of the discussion around him reduces all of Mexican wrestling to a temple in his honor, and talented wrestlers like Lizmark and Gran Cochisse become sacrifices that must be made at the altar of the great being. That bothers me as a fan of the style as a whole, and it bothers me as an analyst as well. What other great wrestler's case so involves tearing down other workers? It should be able to stand tall without resting atop a pile of bones. I ended up ranking him thirty-first. I think I was fair. It was better than his overall rank, at least. He could easily have fared worse on my list if I'd done a better job opening myself up to different types of wrestling, but that's on me for failing to do that.

My biggest issue with Rocky is that for a guy who trades on spectacle and drama, I can't really remember that many individual moments from his matches. Like, all I can recall from the HHH iron man are some of the finishes, and that was a genuinely great match. Mechanically, he was much better than Hogan, but Hogan was a lot better at creating lasting images. That's actually the most enduring Rock match, Rock vs Hogan. Rock no doubt carried the action. Hogan's the one who made it iconic.

I'm not sure if anyone taught me more about Mexican wrestling than Dandy. He shaped my ideas about title matches, heated 3v3s and eventually even those purely technical 3v3s, although that last one did take a while. The man was fantastic not just at working different types of match but at putting his own stamp on them. Discussion of him died down so much since his top fifty finish last time, when a lot of people had just started watching old CMLL and his 1990 run in particular, that he didn't seem to have a shot at even making the top one hundred. That awesome Monterrey brawl with Santo was probably one of the best vintage lucha matches to surface in the past ten years. It didn't seem to affect his standing any. It's funny. Dandy didn't really play much of a role in forming my image of an apuestas match, and if you gave me the choice between two never before seen Dandy matches, one with his hair on the line and the other with a belt on the line, I'd take the title match every day of the week. I say that, but the man certainly doesn't lack for apuestas classics, and maybe those are what got him here this time.

My list has largely gotten its ass kicked, but I'm pleased to see that I got at least one pick exactly correct: 96. Pat Roach 97. Barry Windham 98. Chris Masters

I never really got how someone like Andy Kaufman gained momentum as a clever and insightful pick but Muhammad Ali shouldn't have been allowed as a nominee. Ali was no less a pro wrestler than Kaufman.

I certainly didn't expect to come home from work today and find out that Atlantis was gone. I don't know why I was surprised, but I was. In his prime, there was nothing he couldn't do. Great technician, underrated brawler, fantastic off the ropes and the best flyer in the world in the late '80s. Yet somehow he leaves a lot of people unimpressed. Even a lot of Mexican fans think he was just a guy that his promotion pushed for a long time. But anyway, that was the first time in this thing that I've gone, "Wow, him?" Jericho fell too. I was a little surprised by that, but I also know that he's one of PWO's posterchildren for being overrated, and that for the broader voterbase he's been uncool for over ten years and a drag on his promotion for a long while. Hard to believe there was a period when he was one of the hippest guys in all of wrestling. My favorite Jericho story is the time that he called "Somebody" by Bryan Adams a stupid song and El Dandy told him to get the fuck out of the car, like Iron Sheik talking to Moolah. Anyway, Jericho was my first favorite WCW guy and he made my list somewhere in the seventies or eighties. How much of that was the memories talking I'd rather not try to figure out.

No, I'm gonna do an after action report when my last guy has fallen. I'll spoil it now and tell you that it won't be very interesting. It's a list born of ignorance and sloth. But they say this is about the journey, and I've been closed minded and lazy for well over ten years now.

I really just want to get down to the final hundred names so I don't have to sit here sweating about whether anyone I'm rooting for made the final list. If you're in the top 100 then it's all gravy. This is the most brutal part of the reveal, not even close. I'm sure it would be different if I were heavily invested in anyone who had a shot at number one.

Like who? I'm not even sure when Fiera's prime is supposed to have been.

La Fiera died today. I used to have Fiera as my avatar, two Fieras actually, before switching to Ciclon Ramirez pointing to his sound system. Glad I could honor all three of them with a high vote. Luchadores who have leapfrogged him from 2016 seem to be Hechicero, Ultimo Guerrero, Mistico, MS-1, Rush, Wagner, Brazo de Plata and Perro Junior. Only fourteen Mexican workers finished ahead of him last time, and all fourteen are still on the board as best as I can tell. Wouldn't call this a successful round of voting for him by any means. I guess his high vote was higher this time.

You're not wrong, but you can see something like Lizmark vs Enfermero Jr. and get that the Estrada match from '93 was a template Lizmark had formed long before. The Estrada match is better, largely because Estrada is a more dramatic worker who set out to have the most exciting match possible while still putting Lizmark over, whereas Enfermero seemed to approach his task as putting Lizmark over as strongly as possible while having the most dramatic match he could within those confines. The AAA run is the best representation of him on video, yeah. I can combine that with the flashes of his early '80s work and extrapolate that he was likely working like that in his physical prime as well, when he was also the most explosive athlete in the promotion. You have to do SOME guesswork with the older guys. It's his work after he returns from Pavillon Azteca through about '91 that's fairly disappointing. He didn't seem all that motivated in that period, when he was primarily wrestling heavies. After the Parka feud ends in '94 he starts to show his age but still turns the clock back for a highlight or two.

I see Lizmark took a dive today. Lizmark and Santo were probably the two best Mexican workers at wrestling like an ace. Sorry if no one uses that term anymore. A guy like Atlantis could be great in title matches, but he was more like a sympathy babyface to me.

Ciclon Ramirez fell today. A couple of months ago I watched a match from 1994, Kung Fu, Felino and someone vs Trueno, Ciclon Ramirez and someone. The focus of the match was a rivalry between Trueno and Kung Fu, 1994 Kung Fu. It was as exciting as it sounds. Somewhere in there Ciclon Ramirez took the greatest post shot I have ever seen, and now I'll remember that match for as long as my memory functions. This is the appeal of Ciclon Ramirez. Here's that post shot.

That was my big branchout for this project.