Reel

I thought she was the best wrestler on the planet last year, but before that, I can't say she made much of an impression on me. I don't know what clicked, either for her or for me, but I'm interested and going back and finding out.

A lot of the recent stuff with constant interference by the dude in the police shirt and the rest of ozaki-gun can get pretty grating, and that's the bulk of her matches at this point.

I basically do the same thing with my year-end list, in my head I call it the Produce rule, which is, if this person showed up on some random Wrestler X Produce show, how likely would I be to watch it. It's not a be-all-end-all, but it's a good way to differentiate when things get tough.

Here's the stuff I've liked from Sugiura since 2016: Go Shiozaki v Takashi Sugiura NOAH: Great Voyage in Osaka 5/28/2016 Katsuhiko Nakajima vs. Takashi Sugiura First Navigation 7/1/2017 Takashi Sugiura vs Go Shiozaki NOAH: Kawasaki Festival 8/18/2018 Go Shiozaki/Kaito Kiomiya vs Kenoh/Takashi Sugiura NOAH: Global Tag League 4/11/2018 Takashi Sugiura vs Atsushi Kotoge vs NOAH: Great Voyage in Niigata 4/29/2018 Takashi Sugiura vs Naomichi Marufuji NOAH: Navigation with Breeze 5/29/2018 Takashi Sugiura/KAZMA SAKAMOTO vs Kenoh/Kaito Kiyomiya NOAH: Global Tag League 4/17/2019 Go Shiozaki/Katsuhisa Nakajima/Atsushi Kotoge vs Naomichi Marufuji/Akitoshi Saito/Takeshi Sugiura NOAH: Navigation for the Future 2/1/2019 Go Shiozaki vs Takashi Sugiura NOAH: The Best Final Chronicle 12/6/2020 Katsuhiko Nakajima vs Takashi Sugiura NOAH: N-1 Victory 9/23/2020 Masa Kitamiya/Katsuhiko Nakajima vs Kazushi Sakuraba/Takasi Sugiura NOAH: Great Voyage in Yokohama 3/7/2021 I can't say that I'm the biggest Sugiura guy, but he's been one of the few consistently good wrestlers in NOAH over that time. That being said, I'd have him firmly below Go and Nakajima during that period as a whole, and recently I'd have Kiyomiya over him too.

If I had to project how good I think he is in the scheme of all the wrestlers I've ever seen, I think he might be top 10, but obviously, that isn't what GWE is about, so I'm gonna try and sneak him in on the bottom of my ballot on the basis of the 3 matches I put in the nomination thread and the little bit of other footage, mostly clips from Florida, that we have.

I read them as single issues on comixology unlimited, I don't know if that plays into it. They are categorized in a weird way and in a way that makes them hard to find in search, but if you find the first issue of a run, when you get to the end of the issue, it'll link to the next.

I just saw Toba for this first time a couple of days ago on the Samurai TV 5th Anniversary show. Those big punches with the boxing gloves are awesome. Interested in checking some of this stuff out.

I just read the first two runs on my kindle within the last month, can't speak to the most recent stuff though.

It's not her best match of the run, but the most impressive one to me was the match she got out of Tamina at Money in the Bank. There's also the Asuka match from SummerSlam, and another one from Raw a few weeks earlier.

He said recently he plans on coming back, so we'll see if and how that comes about. I don't know how much he has left in the tank, but I thought some of the stuff he did at the beginning of last year, where he got up from commentary to fight AOP and some of the Rollins stuff, was a lot of fun.

I like the Sano match from SWS, not that one above-average match, almost entirely divorced from the heel gimmick, makes up for the rest of it being lackluster.

He's had the AJ series, which is all great. I thought the Royal Rumble match might be the best WWE match ever after I watched it. The Roman match had a great promo to set it up from Cena, and the match is pretty good, but I expected a lot more than we got. There's been some other stuff of note, a six-man of a Saudi show I remember being good and some stuff other TV stuff. He's definitely added to his case.

I'm only in 99 in my Arsion watching, but Yoshida is already so great, head and shoulders above everybody in that promotion, really. The Fujii match is good, and a testament to Yoshida having that match with somebody who was, I believe, only training grappling at Hiroyuki Abe's gym at that point. The only other later-period match I've seen is the Becky Lynch one, which didn't really grab me, but has become a neat pairing in hindsight.

I'm tempted to say it might be better than the starrcade match, a legit hidden gem.

I think its in the Zellner/Dylan GWE podcast where Dylan talks about part of Cesaro's case being that we could have a good match on Main Event with Kofi and how daunting that was. Bryan went out there and had one of the best matches in WWE history on a WrestleMania card with the guy. It's as much as a signature match as pretty much anyone could have. That's not to knock Kofi, but his list of great singles matches up to that point is non-exsistant.

A thing I'm interested in for 2026 is seeing if there is any good Greg Valentine indie stuff. His 80s stuff is great and the bulk of his case, anybody who can get a good match out of Jay Strongbow in the era that Valentine did is nothing short of miracle worker. He's so great in that period, that I'm surprised that pretty much from 1992, and I think that might be generous, there isn't anything of note, even though he kept working for another 15 years in some capacity.

Johnny Valentine We don't have a ton of footage of Valentine, but every time he shows up, I can't help but think he's one of the best wrestlers I've ever seen. He's physical and can convincingly brutalize people like in the 1972 tag below, but when he has to sell, he's great at that too, stumbling around in a mad daze. The best matches we have from him, he's in his 40's and he's out there with guys like Wild Bill Curry basically inventing BattlArts in 1969. Matches: vs Wild Bull Curry - Houston 6/20/69 with Gene Kiniski vs Giant Baba/Antonio Inoki - JWA 2/1/70 with Dan Kroffat vs Kintaro Oki/Michiaki Yoshimura - JWA 5/29/1972

I think by the time 2026 comes around he'll have a pretty compelling case. Things can happen, but with the style he works and the way he's booked/carries himself, he seems like he's just going to keep putting on on these intense, physical, power struggle matches for as long as he wants to.

I thought she was one of the 3 or so best wrestles in 2018, and if she came back and had another 4 or 5 years on that level, I could see her getting on my ballot, but I don't know how likely her having a sustained run for that length of time is.

We'll see how the next few years play out, but she has been one of the best BIG MATCH wrestlers since she got to WWE. The week-to-week stuff is fine, it's never objectionable but for the most part, I've never come away from a random TV match overly impressed, but when a match really needs to deliver, she delivers. The TakeOver match with Becky, The Bayley stuff in NXT, the Raw title matches with Charlotte, the cell matches the last two years. She was the glue for the first Woman's Royal Rumble. All great stuff.

I'm not over the moon about the current NOAH run. I don't object to the idea of him like some people have lately, he has an aura and a presence, and sometimes that manifests itself in stuff I really like, and other times it's stuff I don't have time for. I thought him grabbing Masao Inoue and tapping him in ten seconds ruled and showed a sense of hierarchy that is rarely ever seen, but I thought the Shiozaki thing was overindulgent and had people placing a lot of meaning on it that it didn't earn. The NJPW run is sort of maligned because that whole era is maligned, and that whole debate has been run into the ground and not worth revisiting, but he was great. The 04 Shibata match is one of the best matches in that promotion in the decade. All that's to say, I'm going to rule him out, but I'm pretty sure there are 100 better wrestlers.

I want to watch more Ray Gonzalez and just more 90s and 2000s PR guys in general.

I admittedly haven't watched a ton of the french catch stuff yet, but from what I can glean there's only a handful of guys; Delaporte, Bollet, Labat are the ones who I have written down to watch, who we have a bunch of matches on tape, so I plan on starting with those guys and seeing where things stand.

Agree with not viewing Cornette as a wrestler, and Heenan is trickier, but I'd be hesitant to include him unless there are some great matches from the WWA or something that I don't know about. I think the more interesting question is whether or not to factor in Harley's run as Vader's manager into his case.

That's fair, there are probably better examples, but I think the point still stands. And, I plan on putting Johnny Valentine on my list somewhere based on his incredibly limited footage, so I don't even stand behind that point completely.