Quentin

So nearly 7 years later, I feel pretty safe in saying that Thatcher is a total lock for me, with a really high ceiling on where he could end up

I agree, I was just going with the structure with which Elliott framed his question, because for someone who's maybe not as high on Bryan as we are or may have some gaps in viewing, the "20 years of being great" could be something you want some clarification on. I can admit as a adamant Bryan number 1 guy that some of that can be a little intense so that analogy might be a more digestible way to view it. As Mania was going on, I went looking for Bryan stuff from the early 00s and realized that ECCW comp of him on YouTube. May do reviews for the matches here but no one hold me to that.

I would say 2006-2007 is when Bryan becomes that type of guy you’re referring to Elliott, and is very safely that in 2008. 1999-2004 you could say a variety of people were realistically having better years like all those folks you named for 2001, even among contemporaries there’s never a point where he’s CLEARLY above let’s say Joe or Ki until later on. That being said, from 2001 I’d still definitely take him in a top 50 guy in the world, MAYBE top 60 and in 2002 he improved that position by quite a bit. A lot of 2003-2004 for Bryan is spent being an undercard guy in New Japan while Joe is getting in to his legendary run. 2003 is harder to justify for him unless you’re really high on the New Japan but he has a MOTYC with Paul London that’s as good as most of the best stuff from the year. 2004 I would say is his best year to that point for him, 5 years in. 2005 is a great year for him and maybe when the tide starts to turn and the “Bryan is the BITW” contingent starts to come alive, but you still have Joe, AJ, KENTA and others being in the mix. I feel pretty safe calling him top 5 in the world at that point though. After that, I personally feel 2006-2009 is pretty clear for him but someone like Chris Hero is coming in to his own, John Cena’s legendary 2007, Hiroshi Tanahashi’s run during this stretch, KENTA’s strong 2009 could have a claim argued. But really once Joe is full drowning in TNA and that next wave of guys is still figuring things out, Bryan was pretty clearly thought of as the best in the world. 2010-2011 is weird with the firing/rehiring but the indie work when he’s gone from WWE is mostly fantastic and he looks like he’s among the elite workers in the world still. 2011 is weird because he’s stuck on SmackDown doing the most he can being given scraps for most of the year but you watch him and still see a guy that you could still rank as a top 40-50 guy that year, but the likes of Claudio and Hero are at the top during those years. 2012-2013 he’s fantastic but you could argue for quite a few people like Negro Casas, Tanahashi, Okada, CM Punk, LA Park, El Generico, WALTER but again he’s not dropping out of the top 10 during that time period. 2014-2015 is extremely limited with the injuries but the work we do have is great and gets all time miracles out of people with the time he did have. Not enough to be in strong consideration for any year but I fully believe that in good health, Bryan continues to be a top 20 guy in the world at minimum even with AJ Styles, Chris Hero, Roderick Strong, Timothy Thatcher, Zack Sabre Jr, Biff Busick, etc coming in to prominence. From 2018 to now, even with the limited work he has done performing on sort of a part time schedule, he reinvents himself again and has a heel run that not only has maybe the best matches between him and AJ Styles or a stellar Brock Lesnar match that I think warrant him as a top 20-30 guy at least, the culmination of that reign is making a career mid carder in Kofi Kingston the hottest thing going in to WrestleMania 35 in 2019 and having one of the best babyface title wins in wrestling history. The rest of his 2019 leaves something to be desired but he makes another non sense tag team work with Erick Rowan, he has a great match with Adam Cole on the SmackDown when the talent was stuck in Saudi Arabia and he’s still delivering when given chances on TV. 2020 he has the excellent match with Drew Gulak and all time miracle performance against The Fiend. Through the transition to no crowds, one of the few people in the WORLD who wasn’t severely effected by this change when it came to his wrestling. The best wrestler in the world that year is either Shingo or one of the AEW guys like Darby, Moxley or Omega, but I don’t think Bryan drops in any major way. Again not the best wrestler in the world hands down but comfortably would make a top 50. And now in 2021, he’s been off to a fantastic start with all his TV stuff being awesome and the Reigns match being fantastic. Who knows what the future will hold after Mania, but right now I’d say he’s in contention for WOTY. So yeah I think the Duncan analogy is apt. The biggest Bryan fans will even tell you it’s not like 1984-1985 Michael Jordan coming and sweeping everyone off their feet. It’s a guy who was really good immediately and kept improving and improving at a rapid pace and then you look up and say “oh yeah, MVP for him isn’t crazy”.

The AJ Styles match from G1 2014 is also a top 3 match from AJ’s New Japan run for me

Kenny I thought was a strong wrestler as early as 2009 in PWG and HDNet ROH, matches I really enjoyed against the Bucks, Davey Richards, Roderick Strong, Christopher Daniels and Austin Aries. The Ibushi Budokan match is what people think of mostly when it comes to his DDT run but a lot of my favorite stuff came from him facing people like HARASHIMA, Shigehiro Irie, and El Generico. Golden Lovers was a great team and they were super instrumental in the development of newer DDT stars like Konosuke Takeshita and Tetsuya Endo with their series. The All Japan junior run extremely fun, having a legitimately incredible match with KAI and a memorable match with a guy like Hiroshi Yamato. He’s really fun in his first NJPW appearances in BOSJ and teaming with Ibushi. The full time NJPW run is interesting because I think the initial Cleaner run as a junior gets underrated, but most of his matches other than the Taguchi stuff is good vs Dorada, Shelley, Sydal and KUSHIDA. Then we get to his run as a main eventer in New Japan and I echo sentiments that in that run he’s part of matches I would call some of the best I’ve ever seen, the Dominion 2017 match is on the short list on matches I would consider being the best ever. His AEW run has been weird character wise but for the most part the in ring has been great over there too, the crown jewel being the PAC iron man match. If you don’t like Kenny, I get it. He’s not particularly great as a babyface or a heel, as talented as he is. If you’re someone who’s critical of a Kobashi or HBK, you may think he’s a worse version of those two with his overacting or facials. But I see a guy who’s been great 12 years so far with more to give still, someone who was great as a top star in 3 major companies and maybe the single most impactful non WWE contracted person on wrestling in the last 20 years. And that latter point may not matter to everyone when compiling a list like this, you may also argument his impact was for the worst, but it’s something that’s hard for me to separate from a Kenny case.

I would actually give Bryan’s 2015 for how long we have him more credit. Obviously no chance of him being the WOTY, but the time we have of him, he’s pretty great and he came back not missing a beat. It wound up being a pretty strong WWE year in general, but there’s no reason to think that if he isn’t forced to retire, he’s not right there in the mix for the top of the heap based off the trajectory he had. Even the matches being saddled with 2015 Big Show and Kane are as good as you could realistically hope for and he has some incredible performances like the Smackdown tag gauntlet and the FastLane match with an unproven Roman Reigns.

Oh yeah totally, in complete agreement on all of that, especially that he’s good before then. His ROH work for some reason gets left out because he was more associated with TNA. I just said 2006 because that’s the last good TNA year and after I think TNA starts to go on a downswing and you see AJ’s role getting diminished.

Even without the WWE run, someone who was flirting with my top 10 the last time. Now with that run under his belt, there’s no doubt in my mind that he’s a top 10 guy. The thing that may keep him from being a number 1 contender is the lack of emotion or heart to a lot of his best stuff that makes you either root for him or against him that may take a match to an all time level. But outside of this we’re talking an excellent TV worker in both WWE and TNA, one of the best gimmick match workers of all time, one of the most dazzling and innovative guys when it came to athletic spots but also in the vein of a Too Cold Scorpio, his stuff looked like it hurt too. And as he got older, took that athleticism and used it more selectively for bigger spots in the climax of matches. I would say he also has 2 years as WOTY in 2009, and maybe more controversially, 2005. I also wouldn’t bat an eye if anyone called him that for 2015 and 2016. A guy where the only real knock against him is that his prime got spent in TNA, but if you do the work and can sit through 2006-2014 TNA, you’ll see a guy that never stopped busting his ass. No matter how bad the product got, no matter how much they deemphasized him in favor of older names, the bad gimmicks, etc, AJ never stopped being AJ. He never stopped being the heart and soul of that company until the day he left.

Top half guy for me. He’s good in 2008, already has a great match under his belt by 2009, and by 2011-2012 he starts feeling like one of the best wrestlers in the world and that never stops, all the way up until now where 2017 through today he has a case for being the best wrestler on the planet. Elite tag team guy, all time great rivalry with David Starr, the best modern monster that wrestling has had and someone that thrives in those AMBITION settings too. I’ll come back here at various points with pre-2017 WALTER recommendations

Perrito is so so so fun, man. I’m not sure how high I could realistically see someone having him if he was to make a list but man the dude was such a ball of energy. Maybe a little inconsistent but one of the most charming guys of his generation. The footage we have him as a baby in 1995 and I think already his potential in his interactions with Juvie. Way more talented than maybe the totality of his career maybe shows, but one of the kinds of people who pop off the screen every single time.

Yeah, between being one of the most unique and innovative high flying guys of the boom, developing in to a really strong worker on the mat and then the great violent babyface moments that Phil mentioned, Slim has a shot for me. I would also mention the 2007 cage match with Patrick Bentley, I think that’s actually better than his war games performance. He’s fun in 2002 as a spot guy and was having legitimately great matches as recently as 2019. Slim has never failed in the “random match theory” of throwing on random matches of his and seeing how they impress me. A dude that honestly just got robbed, there’s no other way to put it.

The Fiend match is way better than it has any right to be and I would probably say it’s Bryan’s most impressive babyface match in WWE.

Going through the old pages, you highlighted “Bryan not selling for a year”. I’m assuming you meant the 2013 through Mania 30 run and I was curious why you classified it as not selling. It’s been 6 years so maybe your stance has changed since then but I’m fascinated by that. As a Bryan number 1 voter, I do think people saying Bryan should have a more critical lens on him is fair and I think if he’s gonna be a guy in play for the overall number 1, all possible critiques should be addressed.

HARASHIMA The face of DDT, best worker in company history and still arguably the best worker in the company. One of the best and most consistent wrestlers in Japan for at least 10-11 years that we have proof of. In the top tier of title match workers of the last decade along with fitting in great in any situation you want to plug him in to. Whether that’s having to be adept at comedy stuff, working young, spot heavier guys like Endo and Speedball, grappling with Sakaguchi and Shinya Aoki, or carrying someone like Soma Takao to a career match and at 46, shows no strong signs of slowing down. Didn’t get nominated last time but someone I had pegged for my 100 before realizing he didn’t have a thread. HARASHIMA vs Shinya Aoki: DDT Judgement 2/17/19 HARASHIMA vs KUDO: DDT Audience 5/31/15 HARASHIMA vs Kenny Omega: DDT Into The Fight 2/17/13

Hero is someone in play for me for the top 10. That might sound insane on paper, but he’s a guy you can really look at his career and chart the growth for. Maybe he’s not immediately great like Ki or Bryan at implementing all his ideas, but a solid base is there, along with likable quality to him that even the best guys to emerge from that period didn’t always have (and then he flips that on it’s head and becomes a really strong heel). You could argue that he was overly ambitious early on but I would counter with I find it very impressive that a guy like Hero could work matches going 20, 30, 40, even 60+ minutes so early on and not only are they not terrible, most of them remain engaging the whole way through and a few of them are really great. Everyone knows about how good he is in 2016, arguably the best wrestler in the world from December 2013 to January 2017. But like Sam here, as I go through this IWA MS stuff, eventually planning on getting to CHIKARA and whatever else, yeah he’s not the guys I mentioned before, he’s not peak Joe, he’s not even peak Aries or peak Nigel, but what you see is a guy that did his damndest to make sure whatever he did on the card stood out, no matter what he got asked to do. And that applies even to his last WWE stint being relegated to NXT UK and making the most of that, still looking he could be a wrestler of the year level guy if he got the chances.

I was a Bryan number 1 voter last time and that was with roughly 13-14 years of being an incredible wrestler and thriving in anything you could ever ask a wrestler to do and thriving when he wasn’t even meant to either at points. In the 6 years since then (3 really since he returned in 2018), he’s been the best or near the best in the company once again as both a heel and eventually a veteran babyface. Possible WWE MOTY in every year since he’s come back and there’s no sign at all of that ending any time soon, when he’s having a killer 2021, 20 years after the Ki match from King of Indies. Bryan number 1 is a lock for me.

I didn’t do all the digging I could on Jumbo when I turned in a ballot last time (I only jumped in during the fall of 2015 for GWE), but in the 5 years since then, he’s skyrocketed for me from being a middle of the pack guy on my last ballot to being a top 10 lock. I know more contemporary guys will probably get more thought now and deeper looks than in 2016 ie the Danielson’s and Hero’s of the world, even a Tanahashi. But I hope that by 2026, Jumbo doesn’t fall even further, just because analyzing him isn’t cool anymore 20 years after finishing number 1 in 2006. But maybe such a thing is kind of unavoidable.

Thanks, I had some other names I had written too but this should help my confidence in jumping in to it. Would definitely love something like this and think it would be super useful in making this as informative and fun as possible. Everyone has their own strong points and weak spots in viewing and I think embracing those would go a long way for everybody.

Glanced through this thread and saw some names I’ll make sure to remember but for the people who have made their way through the French stuff, who are the people to keep an eye on as potential inclusions for ballots? The little bit I’ve seen I’ve loved but I’m still having trouble having an approach on who to tackle first.

As far as working like a big man and really getting the most out of your size, I don't think anyone in the world is doing that better than Jonah Rock right now and the best examples of this are coming from PWG of all places

Brock and I are back, and more annoyed than ever. Listen to us talk about a lot of things in the modern wrestling fandom. https://soundcloud.com/prowrestlingonly/psychology-is-dead-the-art-of-annoyance