Ma Stump Puller

@highflyflow Did you see that Arisa Nakajima/Yoshida match that recently got found? Pretty cool

Including both TPW matches from the August show W/ Yoji Anjo v Takashi Ishikawa & Yoshihiro Takayama (TPW I Shall Return To Yokohama 25.08.1996) Mainly wanted to watch this because it's Sayama/Takayama but I was immediately dismayed that instead we instead got a lot of Ishikawa antics instead. Don't get me wrong, he's a perfectly fine wrestler, but he's really always been the fourth wheel in these sort of star-power tag team situations and purely there as a good hand, of which this match makes no attempt to change my mind on that. Sayama's performance here is pretty snug as he more or less just does his signature spots in the typically fast style we've more or less gotten used to, though there is some pretty cool grappling between him and Takayama here where they sprawl a little; despite it lasting like a minute at best it was definitely something to see the two of them going for a quick shoot. Anjo is I'd say the star here as he balances his signature shithouse antics with legitimate hate for his Golden Cups ally as they exchange some good blows between the two of them, Takayama showcasing his brute strength against Anjo's experience. Sadly the match goes well too short as Anjo just abruptly wins with a backdrop and the Ground Cross for the submission victory without so much as an attempt at a build beforehand. Perfectly fine for what it was but far too short to be much else than that. RANK: Decent W/ Yoji Anjo v Daikokubo Benkei vs. First Tiger Mask & Yoji Anjo (same event) I swear, Tokyo Pro had to have been created by a smark time traveller: how else do you get in your head that Yoji Anjo and Tiger Mask somehow are perfect for tag title belts, exactly? Pre-match promo has Abdullah forget the name of Benkei and have to keep saying "My partner! " over and over until someone eventually must've said something and he corrects himself. But yeah, this match is fucking bonkers just by names alone and I was actually astonished that it wasn't just said name-value that made this watchable. Daikokubo Benkei played the original masked Arashi back in WAR (you know, the weird big dude who they kept shoving in round matches for some bizarre reason, yeah that guy) and despite not being particularly good (especially for ex-sumo lads) he gets the memo here. He's a big ugly guy who makes mean faces and takes the bumps for Abdullah, really not all that deep there. He does have a lovely lariat though so that's something. Anjo is a delight with his shithead antics being such a great feeder for the more limited pair. Seeing him brawl with Abdullah as he does his usual gross fork stuff, his amazingly awful shrieks and screams as Abby works the head being a memorable highlight during the first half. Benkei continues the control with biting and chokes as you'd expect until Anjo gets a good fiery comeback by biting his ear in a bearhug, though comes short despite some nice kicks. Abby works with that dynamic better by selling really hurt when Anjo starts throwing with his own wild screams until eventually being able to catch his leg and sweep him. Sayama does nothing for basically the entire first half until he comes in during a submission to throw a safe kick to the back and then just wanders back to the tag rope as if nothing happened. More kino brawling as Anjo manages to finally get a handle of Abby's fork and in a particularly nasty spot gets him over a table post-gig so all the fresh blood just spills onto it in front of the cameras while the two are yelling. Sayama shows up to land some more kicks before disappearing again. The second half has Abby on the floor while Anjo and co just keep hitting his head over and over lol. We get some Tiger Mask/Abby interactions and they're pretty sweet, with Sayama throwing a bunch of fairly flush head kicks and even doing a standing monkey flip on Abby that was somewhat successful. Yeah it's a typical spot for the guy this decade, but frankly it's a miracle that the guy ca even still do that at this point without something breaking or snapping. The lead-in for the finish switches tact to focus on submissions, the monsters having zero answers bar mounds of interference to deal with it. Benkei hits a series of bad splashes alongside similarly meh looking moves until Anjo counters a scoop slam into the deep Fujiwara armbar for the tapout victory and the belts. This is surprisingly decent even if I think it loses the allure after the first half is over and done with. It includes a GREAT heat-seeking start and Anjo doing a shockingly good job working the beaten down babyface squaring up against the mean big lads with strikes. Thought him and Abdullah clicked the best out of everyone here, two dudes who are great at emoting getting to just ham it up with screams and dashes of blood all over the place like a B-movie horror. You don't get to appreciate it usually but with Abby's obvious English spot-calling and as an native speaker you can really tell just how much the match is dictated by him in particular. He's consistently getting Benkei to land more offence if it doesn't stick, getting Anjo to beat him up more when he's getting his big comeuppance, etc etc. Cool to see his experience helping to make this better than it was, and fair play to him I think for a 90's Butcher showcase this is pretty close to his cap at this point. Tiger Mask is.....here, I guess. Kinda disappointing as he does next to nothing here bar a lot of strikes and the occasional hold, hell he's not even legal for anything more than 2 minutes total here, dude does nothing on the apron either. I can't say his strikes aren't awesome but at the same time even those are very constrained which makes this feel like Sayama was more interested in the paycheck than actually trying. Definitely worth the watch if you wanna see a novelty matchup that actually pays off in Anjo/Abby but nothing beyond good in my mind. RANK: Good

if there's one thing great about Yasuda is that he is always pretty good at whatever role he's thrown into in terms of getting the crowd behind or against him, the 1997 G1 match against Tenzan and his 2002 Yoshie tag are worlds apart in what's required of him but he always knocked it out of the park

Had a couple of legitmately awesome years in the mid-2000's but around about like 2009 the wheels came off and never got back on again. Also the fact I don't think he had more than 5 something good singles matches that weren't gimmicked does hurt his case in the long run.

Good wrestler, will not be in the top 100 though. Shame since the guy even at the dregs of his career was still a very competent powerhouse-style worker.

Early JWP/Judo work was cool, but her stint in the West after is for the most part honestly just awful for the most part, idk if she just checked out after a couple of years or if it was the quality of opponents but she like downgraded significantly quality wise. Sad because you have a good couple of years where she seemed really promising with the Judoka gimmick

Sucks there's so little of his early work readily available since he seemed such a strong babyface with the late-material we have available, but there's GAORA for you. Won't be on the list but a good mention

If you PM @Grimmas I'm sure they would be able to accommodate your list and add them to the others submitted. We don't have a official system set up yet, so don't worry!

If you want the most authentic experience (I.E. no clipped shit, no dubbed entrances) look up the RE-C-DUB Project on Internet Archive, they have multiple years worth of material purely caught off local TV tapings. Very helpful

Idk I think the idea of Cena doing 200+ matches would've been super painful, even if they relegated a lot of them to tags or whatever. The guy did not look physically up to it the whole year and the couple of at least enjoyable matches came down to him being with guys who could work with his significant limitations.

Very polarising. One side you have his compelling character work and ability to grab crowds irregardless of the situation, the other he can be a lazy bastard who relies too much on shtick and cheapens out on having reliable matches, either leaning into complete apathy with his spotty selling or going way overboard into risky spots that probably contributed aplenty to his injury troubles. He might get on a top 100, I haven't decided yet since the NJPW-ism style is so bleh to me. If you can though go find his CMLL appearances, him as a heel henchmen for Liger is a lot of fun

I mean as a top 100 wrestler in terms of quality he'd be the last person on, but for "top 100 guys who I watch just for fun" he's definitely on there. So many incredible car-clash moments, loved his recent Best in the World run when he wasn't trying to pretend he was a wrestler.

There's going to be a lot of regency bias towards more recent individuals, I can see a lot of the 2016 GWE list not even showing up since a lot of that userbase don't even bother with the Projects anymore (their loss!). Predicting a lot of 80s wrestlers to be either much higher up here or not even there. Naito/Ospreay/Okada will all be there, though I can also see individuals like Gunther or Sami Zayn getting similar upgrades depending on a few factors. I'd hope so, Akiyama even this year has really shone as a very meat and potatoes-style wrestler, no frills but the things he does are very good.

I've now updated this C&A with a bunch of extra matches, enjoy

It's crazy that a unironic criticism of a wrestler (ESPECIALLY of this era and time) is "they're too stiff" like this was around when you had Hokuto legitmately punching people out in matches and doing career-threatening things to a far greater extent than a rough kick or powerbomb. It boggles the mind. I've watched a good bit of Hotta's matches (from her good years ofc, she sharply dwindles in watchability after the early 2000s.) and she's very much someone that I can totally get people not liking. She has a very crowbar-y style that some can work around and enhance and some clearly cannot, and she really doesn't give a flying fuck either way. She's gonna hit you hard, she's going to try to sit on you in the mat-work, it's just a part of life. Her style is very distinctive in that she obviously borrows a lot from shoot-style in her methodical grappling and focus on more "real" sequences, more grit as opposed to cooperative back and forths. She seems to think she was the hair apparent to Maeda when she's probably in actuality was closer to Anjo. Funnily enough her best matches are working that shithead Anjo-style bout where she's just being a huge bully to her opponent and stiffing them to death, it working either as a hometown defender against LLPW's talent or beating up the natives. She's better than I think some are giving credit to her selling-wise; I've seen instances where she doesn't clearly care about it, but with the right people she tends to ease up and start making more of an effort, ultimately it feels more realistic than the melodramatics of the 90s and fits her style much better. Kicks are great and I love the assortment of just randomly brutal bombs she seems to pull out of her hat, even if sometimes the pacing of them seems to drift as her later matches in the 90s have her doing seemingly endless amounts of moves to a near equal amount of near falls. I can definitely see someone having them on the top 100, for sure. It just depends on their tastes because she does some things great but can look pretty flavourless in other aspects, especially after the 90s where her mobility goes to pot and she has to rely more on the slop-brawling that dominated the industry for the 2000's.