Tetsujin

I have no issue with people arguing against anyone's case for the top 100 at their threads, if it's done with respect. I don't think James has enough high ceiling to be considered (the same happens with some of the most memorable knockouts like Awesome Kong or Gail Kim), but I'm totally on board with the idea of reivindicate her as a good bridge between the awful USA's womens wrestling situation and the horsewomen booms (again, same with the knockouts division); she's definitely a much more interesting wrestler to remember and focus on than Stratus and Lita.

Micahels had a really strong year with his Rumble performance, his Mania match against Flair, the Jericho rivalry and being super consistent on TV. I don't know if he'd be my choice but that has to be his best year since 1997.

It's probably HBK for me as well, but most of the people Micro mentioned are pretty god damn close, and I would add the Pillars (specially Taue).

I'm going with Hiromu. First of all, this year was stupid and probably the less modern wrestling I've seen since I'm a grown up fan. So, I'm not an expert here. But Hiromu had a great match with Ospreay, then the super fun Liger retirement match, then he participated in the New Japan Cup and carried Tomoaki Honma to shades of his lost greatness before his fatal injury, a fun comedy match with Yano and a blaster with Ishii. Then he carried fucking EVIL to his best singles match ever, and his performance was so good that he managed to make the japanese crowd go insane for his nearfalls, not able enough to resist their cheers for him even with the COVID restrictions and all that bullshit. Hell, it was obviously a transition title match, and Hiromu was a Jr (and the Jr Champ!), there was no freaking way he would win... but when the match happened, Hiromu bursted his ass of to make us believe he could. And the match itself is pretty strong, which is shocking considering everything else about EVIL's heel run has been from mediocre to absolute disgusting. His matches with Ishimori were pretty good, his team with BUSHI was great and had a really fun match with Desperado and Kanemaru (forgot the date and/or event, though), and then he finished his year with an amazing BOSJ run and a BOSJ Finals with Desperado that... Well, we all know that match was an instant classic, the best COVID-era match of the year.

Aja Kong. Three near perfect all-time classics against Hotta, Toyota, and the Queendom tag (the Hokuto rivalry might be the best of this year to me), nobody peaked higher than her in this year excepto Hokuto the few shows she worked. Bret Hart had a really strong year too, even working with low-level guys at WWE most of the time.

Yeah his NJPW run has made him amazing. He always brings so much fresh air to the New Japan formula, both in singles and tags, against elite level workers like Tana, Naito, Ibushi and Ishii, but also carrying less talented workers like SANADA, EVIL, Fale or YOSHI HASHI. Also, his promos are hilarious.

Misawa, definitely. Kawada is close, but Misawa's peaks are undeniable both in singles and tags. It's probably his best year ever.

Flair. I mean c'mon.

I would say Satánico. Not a big fan of the Cochisse match, but his fights with Atlantis, Súper Astro and Shiro Koshinaka are extremely fun.

It's pretty god damn close between Kobashi, Hokuto and Hansen. I wanna include Aja Kong, Tenryu and Kandori on the conversation as well, but those other three had all-time great years.

Shibata had a killer NEVER Championship reign with great stiff matches against Ishii, some WOS-NJPW hybrid cool matches with ZSJ (helping him to achieve his peak in New Japan), both reDragon members, the Third Generation (gotta LOVE the first Nagata match the most), Riddle, Hero, giving EVIL his best matches, an amazing G1 match with Naito... A really, really strong year. Underrated WOTYC for 2016.

Now that the year is over, I can 100% sure say that Bryan Danielson is my WOTY. Shingo, Reigns, Tanahashi and Rollins (maybe Desperado as well) all came close, but what Dragon accomplished both in his last WWE run and in his absolute banger of current AEW run is just something else. He excels at every situation and environment you throw at him, wheter you put him at the main event of WrestleMania in a triple threat match, or a short tv match with Evil Uno. And, boy, this "cocky-to-asshole living legend" gimmick he's been developing lately is the cherry on top. The GOAT.

Maybe one of the big Portland boys like Buddy Rose, Roddy Piper or Rick Martel.

This is maybe the strongest Kobashi year. Absolute blast.

Even with the legendary Okada's reign, I'm still going with Naito. The Tanahashi trilogy is better than the Okada-Omega one, crazy good G1, amazing matches with Elgin, Ibushi, Juice, Omega, ZSJ, and he was at the peak of his popularity. He looked as good as anyone else in history.

WALTER.

He was cool before NXT. Not super great, but for a guy of his age and size he built a really strong aura around him, and the guy has undeniable charisma that can carry most of his matches to make them look better than they actually are. Once NXT turned him into an epic main eventer, I fucking started hating him. The Gargano trilogy will always be one of the worst series of matches I've ever seen, he has nothing matches against other guys too... He's just not a good big match worker. Cole is at his best when working 15 minutes on tv (take a look at the Daniel Bryan match in SmackDown, that happened in the middle of his horrible NXT title reign but he had such a great performance against Bryan. The Jungle Boy match at Dynamite is also a proof of this). Not a contender for my list, but has some cool stuff when working small.

I just watched the Tamura and Hideki matches for the first time ever and I'm hyped as fuck for watching more of his stuff. The MiSu and Moxley matches are amazing as well. Hell, the Hideki match might be the true 2011 MOTY. At his best, Barnett seems like one of the most talented ever. But gotta watch more, how many pro wrestling did he do?

The guy is building his case as we speak. Let's see what he manages to do in these next five years. 2026 will still be super early to compare him to the greatest pro wrestlers of all time, though.

Gotta say he was the last wrestler that made me enjoy ROH back in 2015 against Jay Lethal. His NXT stuff has obviously been a total blast. Excellent tag and midcard worker, and he improved a lot as a heel compared to his pre-WWE career. The Danielson match is amazing, but I need to watch much more of his indy stuff to see if it holds up, I'm specially interested in his PWG and ROH work, but any hidden gem like some of the matches Clayton spoke about will be well received as well.

The only way I could see Taue as underrated is when directly compared to the other Pillars. At his very best he's as good as them and I think an argument can be made about him being the best one, but he's the only one of the four with no overall #1 contendership defenders. Speaking about Taue and Akiyama, the have my favourite sub-10 minute match ever in early 1997 (forgot the exact date, maybe It was the same show as the Kobashi/Misawa GOAT match). They both work in a really intelligent way to tell their story as well as they could and managed to produce a under the radar MOTYC (to me, at least).

He's criminaly underrated, in a sense that most people will agree is great when asked about him, but nobody will bring his name to the conversation in the first place, when he's such an obvious pick for one of the greatest wrestlers of today. I need to dive deep in his first indie run, but his work as Neville at peak NXT is fucking amazing and his title run specially felt huge. His main roster run was a hit or miss when it came to booking, but he strongly delivered any time. He was a random midcarder by mid-2015, yet he managed to make everybody believe he could won the WWE Title against Seth Rollins in an open challenge (that match is soooo good, underrated gem). His Cena US Title match is one of my favourites of that reign (and god knows that title reign has aged poorly as hell). Fuck, his King of the Cruiserweights stuff was great, carrying an almost dead division (his matches against Gallagher and Aries are the highlights here, but he worked great with everyone on that roster and even carried Enzo to his best matches). Then he left WWE and had anither fucking crazy awesome title run, but this time not as a top babyface like in NXT, but as THE BASTARD gaijin of Dragon Gate. He also has the only Cara Noir match I really like. His AEW run is been limited by him being British in the pandemic era, and to me is a real shame he isn't one of the main heels of the company because he's a full package and is way better than anybody in The Elite has been. Help build Hangman as a top guy with a pretty cool series of matches early on the company's history, gave Omega great matches where he hadn't anything scheduled between the Moxley feud and the tag titles run, the Andrade matches are a DELIGHT even with shitty overbooking... Man, he's been consistently great throughout so much time right now, at many different points in his career and against a cool variety of opponents, a lot of them not even close to his level. One of the all time great bumpers, crazy mix of athleticism and ruthless agression, he can be a great underdog, dominant babyface top guy, dominant top heel, he can be a dirty scumbag or the biggest underdog in the world for one night, super unappreciated at elevating others, has the longevity... Maybe he doesn't have as much all time elite level matches as so many other contenders (right now I would only rank his match with Sami in a top 100 for GME), but he's the king of the very good to great matches and one of the strongest workers in any company and/or division he's been.

Honestly, right now this fella is closer to make my list than not, and that's crazy to me. Underrated consistency and has the great matches. Pretty god dam good at his peak. Great heel but also underrated babyface. Amazing execution of all his spots (GOAT powerslam, the worked stomps, the punt kick, obviously the RKO is one of the best finishers of all time, that weird backbreaker he does sometimes, etc). His character work in most of his big matches and rivalries is cool. Also, I've always found fascinating the prestige he receives from other wrestlers, they often call him one of the best to work with. Definitely a contender for my list, yeah.

First forty minutes or so of the show were AMAZING and exactly what I want in my pro wrestling: first the Hangman celebration, and man I'm in board for that, and then the next number one contender appears and the tension escalates quickly but organically. Loved that segment. Then, because Evil Uno is booked against Bryan, we have a reason for not having the Page/Danielson match right now, but we still move to the next segment of the show with logic, and boy was that opening match fun. Gotta love bully Danielson, but honestly Evil Uno surprised me, he showed potential here. And, my favourite part, the crowd went allong with all this stuff: they obvioulsy cheered for Hangman and reacted at everything Danielson wanted them to react and how he wanted them to react, but my surprise was to hear how over Dark Order as a whole is because of the Hangman story, and Evil Uno was pretty over as the underdog. This is pro wrestling when it's done right, and it's the most beautiful thing in the world. I don't care about Colt Cabana (and funnily enough crowd seemed to didn't care either, but next week they're on Chicago so I guess i'ts gonna be hot), but Danielson is having fun bullying Dark Order before having his title match, and that sounds fun as hell. Really liked the Ishii tag match, everyone played their role well. But man, I HATED that they didn't give Ishii his own entrance with his fucking badass theme song. It's TOMOHIRO ISHII. MAKING HIS AEW DEBUT. C'mon man. My biggest dissapointment with this show was how they decided to finish two really interesting rivalries after the first PPV match. Both MJF/Allin and Punk/Kingston had so much potential, why ending just like that after one match? Darby shouldn't accept the fact MJF cheated to defeat him, and oh my, Eddie DEFINITELY SHOULDN'T accept that Punk defeated him like that. I don't buy it. Punk/MJF will be fine, but at this point, I'm not nearly as interested because I'm assuming things are gonna end after one match so why should I be more invested for a rivalry? Is Cody Rhodes the only one allowed to have a multi-chapter rivalry? Speak of the devil, I'm kinda interested in that 4vs4 multiman they're setting up. It should be hard for Cody to fuck things up when he will be surrounded by PAC, Black, Andrade, FTR and the Lucha Bros + Arn and Tully doing their thing. Sounds like a very cool match, hope they dare to make it an elimination or, even better, a Gauntlet match, just to elevate the stakes and ending the rivalry in a big way (and hopefully with the heels winning). Nyla vs Shida was pretty good. Nyla looked great and I hope she wins the whole tournament and championship, because she's the only wrestler that forces the other women to fight a kind of different match where it's easier to do something, you know, good. The "monster heel vs underdog" dynamic almost always works, trying to have epic 50-50 matches when they're not at that level yet, doesn't. So yeah, I'm rooting for Rose here. REALLY liked the main event. I hate Jay Lethal because duh, everyone should, but he gave a pretty cool, motivated, performance. And boy, Sammy Guevara is a delight to watch, he countered everything Lethal had for him, and he moves so fucking fast and with so much... grace, and fluidity. He also puts so much energy behind every move he does, and he's believable in a way few other current high flyers usually are (even Darby, sometimes). Glad he retained, he's having a crazy run, and when that boy reaches his peak, I'm sure he's gonna have blast after blast.

He definitely has a case. An underrated contender for best wrestler of this last decade. He has the ability to shine in settings I usually don't like that much (Dragon Gate, 2019-onwards New Japan). And the crazy part is that we're still living his peak.