Ma Stump Puller

Great epic peak, feel like she gets a little bit too much flack for her work post-prime though. Her mobility takes a big hit but she makes up for that by hitting just as hard and being very game to push herself with the right people (Aja, Meiko). She also has a fairly fun tag stint with the headbutting GOAT Carlos Amano where they take on a bunch of wildly different duos and I'd say Dynamite despite definitely being the weakest of the links most of the time still shows that there was some quality to be had in her just steamrolling people with huge kicks and massive bombs. Even wrestling with ACTIVE LUNG CANCER she's still got it. Easy top 50 for me.

Tanaka is a weird case for myself. He has some brilliant atheticism and the guy has been a consistent perennial force when it comes to guys who do not age. I've seen him in his late 40's do 450 splashes and bounce around the ring like he totally hasn't had 20+ years of wear and tear on him, tending to have the better performances on a card than many far younger. He also has one of Kendo Kashin's best ever matches (if that means anything) On the other hand the guy has some of the WORST wrestling instincts I've ever seen from someone in GWE consideration; he will repeatedly sell big for a attacked arm or leg before immediately dropping it to do moves with the same limb, doing kicks with a leg that he wasn't able to put any weight on a minute prior. Yoshinari Ogawa gives this man a million lead-ins for him to sell the head or work something explosive but he doesn't do anything and just settles for the usual leg holds/no contact kicks. He really struggles in complex, elaborate settings that require him to do more than just his regular flashy routine which is bizarre for a guy who started in PWFG and had a multi-year stint in Battlarts. He also has some of the weakest performances in company history there as well which is a HUGE - for me since that company was stacked in the 90s. I really struggle to rank him on any top 100 because you only really ever get a certain amount of depth with him.

They spend 99% of the time as midcard heels so I'd say they were midcard, no? I haven't seen anything suggesting they are a net negative to the product either. I bring up Makai Club/Voodoo Murders because they A. Existed during periods of growth (which runs contrary to the narrative presented here) B. Were arguably even worse at their peak (Makai Club were in every main event for a good long while and TARU was immobile even in the peak of VM's push and couldn't work a good singles match) Is it "weird"? idk. I just feel like it's a erroneous point in general to associate a specific faction as being behind a national downturn in business

Says a lot that we're this far into the next millennium and we're still finding great performances out of her like that '83 Jaguar match found out of nowhere recently. Really stellar peak, found her 90's work to be pretty mixed depending on who you ask; some say it's a continuation of that brilliance, others find it dull and much more plodding by comparison. I shan't be that harsh, but I do think that Devil around the 1990's becomes much more effective in tags where her domineering powerhouse work becomes more effective and pronounced by comparison to her more technical side found in the last decade. Now for me I found her hurling people around like sacks of shit really fun, however I can see how that can glare on people compared to the more crazy workrate that they would expect. Her GAEA work I think is when she starts to really show her age wherein she drags down a lot of matches by her lackadaisical pace and horrendous selling, not helped by her occasional dip into nonsensical WWF Undertaker cosplay with the Super Heel shtick which got real old after like the 4th time she was indulging in it. She has a better peak than Aja, but lacks the longevity/versatility that she had, I think. That said, easy top 50 for me.

HoT have a new shirt out every single tour (and they all sell fairly well all things considered if they keep getting made) and there was a grandswell of support for him both during the match and after. They will always gravitate towards native home-grown (or at least perceived to be) talent than those from elsewhere, it's pretty ubiquitous. The main issue is, as mentioned, the Japanese economy is in the toilet right now. None of the major promotions have had particularly amazing success post-COVID (AJPW had a little boost but that's basically all gone) so the smarky idea that it's down to a particular group/individual being pushed is particularly erroneous. There are much bigger problems contributing to NJPW's business than some goofy mid-card heels.

AEW is his prime contract and is the one he'll be undertaking the most. He's "signed" to DDT as well and he has done like a couple of shows per-year. I'm sure this'll lead to a strong title shot at WK but the draw will be Tanahashi ultimately, you could have anyone in that slot and it wouldn't matter all that much. Probably This is simply untrue: many wrestlers in Japanese promotions obtain substantial roles within the companies they frequent especially Tana who's been pivotal to the admin and restructuring of NJPW since the rear-end of Inoki-Ism. He's a CEO with a board to answer to but is nevertheless the CEO. It's a substantially larger issue than it was in, say, 2005 (where it was non-existent bar memes like Kenzo Suzuki) and 2015 (where it was only in exceptional conditions/was mostly non-native stars like AJ). Now that the economy is so weak and COVID has done its damage we're seeing a lot of open season hiring by both major Western companies that rest assured will continue to happen. HoT is fine, it's the same thing as what Voodoo Murders/Makai Club were in the 2000s and other silly heel groups from even earlier than that. They sell a new shirt for them every tour and it seems like they make enough money to necessitate their existence, even if smarks hate their style (which is understandable). If they weren't profitable I imagine they wouldn't be around.

The Yen is HORRENDOUS at this point and time, Tanahashi could be the greatest businessman ever and it wouldn't mean anything, especially when the other major companies have significantly stronger currencies and thus much far more money to play with. If someone wants to leave to go to either of them for financial reasons there's not really anything he can do. Native audiences seem to have gravitated towards EVIL than Takashita; which is expected since one of them is a home-grown native who's been there for over a decade and the other isn't even signed and will never be. It's a hard sell even excluding the above to get people to spend their ever-deceasing money on frivolous things when salaries in Japan are similarly awful.

It's a weird thing to say in general tbh, to this day I still haven't seen someone make a regular snap suplex look like it could've broken someone's back like he did. The guy got the physicality element of wrestling to a far greater and sublated art than I think even a lot of modern guys have done. He might've lost a lot of that post-prime but occasionally that mentality kicks in and you get a awesome moment out of the guy.

Abby might make onto the list, and it's actually mostly off his AJPW work in the 80s/90s. The guy is a solid TV worker and I think gets some pretty solid showings against Ogawa and Akiyama respectfully (he gives Akiyama in particular a HUGE rub in their matches together and makes the guy seem like a huge prospect) and even his 90s material wherein his physicality is heavily diminished has him have some pretty solid fun outings. The tag with Anjo comes to mind there; he basically keeps the match together in that aspect. The man gets a lot of volume out of a fairly small playbook, which can be commended even if the formula by the 2000's had been reduced to slop brawling.

need to update this a little in the future when I'm not super lazy

he was quite good at taped promos, his Cena one prepping to the 2012 match comes to mind

Terrific worker, watching JWP in 2002 really makes me appreciate how great she was when every match she was in felt fun and exciting. Still probably the contender for the person with the most indie bookings per year to this very current one (to the point of having multiple matches in multiple promotions on the THE SAME DAY) which speaks to how much of a formidable workhorse she turned out to be. Comedy stuff is always hit and miss with me but you don't even need to touch that to put her on a top 100. She's got Arn-levels of consistently solid outings with greater peaks, so.....

I think footage helps Ishikawa massively in this case as well. In 2016 he was essentially ranked off his mid 90s/early 2000s work and MAYBE a little of Battlarts 2.0. thrown in (which is still shockingly underexplored) like the Greco singles and the like, in 2026 we have the advantage of knowing he was already great by 1993 (the Ishikawa/Kashin match he has in NJPW comes to mind) and the fact that he hits another mini-peak in the 2020s as you mentioned. One could absolutely make the case that he can make a #1 slot based on the level of quality maintained for about 30 years at this point.

To be fair, how much of that do we put on Cena's own inability to work a coherent heel style and how much do we then apply to the obviously screwy booking that hindered his ability to actually get heat/work as a heel? Because while obviously there's a element to Cena's own understanding that flubbed it, there's also I think clearly behind the scenes issues that prevented him from actually making any sort of consistent strides towards having those good showings

He broke it, actually. That one injury led to him suffering a series of domino effects (additional injuries/concussions) namely a nasty addiction to painkillers that he'd get from the rehab process that ultimately ended his full-time career as a wrestler.