Ma Stump Puller

I had Shuji Ishikawa #75 on my ballot. There's something to be said about how grand someone's career is when you can legitmately find like 3 moments in time that could be determined as their "prime" career-wise. Ishikawa had his BJW run where he did great stiff-affairs with their crew (arguably the MOST proficient when it came to pushing boundaries) alongside being a deathmatch pro, then he had his AJPW stint where he holds the tag titles with Suwama for what feels like forever and now we have his indie run where he's having pretty great work in every promotion you can think of and even some you can't. He's not terribly versatile; you're getting violence with his hands or with weapons; but it's about just how impressive he's been able to use those limitations to his advantage irregardless of the opponent or setting. He has had a hell of a career and is still adding to it week by week.

I ranked Kazuo Yamazaki #79 on my ballot. His is a bit of a strange case, someone who exceled in shoot-style but never really got the role that I think he eventually deserved if not down to his lack of ego. Original UWF he came in as a green Sayama trainee and did fine, only his first Maeda/Sayama match really became anything beyond decent for the house style. When he goes to NJPW he picks up really quickly in quality though and by the founding of UWF Reborn he's more or less the wrestler he'll be for the next 15 years, a great gatekeeper with solid offence and a capacity to get something good out of anyone he's paired with. That reputation almost hurts him to an extent since he never quite has those stand-out incredible performances under these promotions as often as you'd like and he can feel a little bit safe at points, but otherwise I enjoyed his output there. Most would agree that his peak was when he was a consistent force in NJPW's G1's and I'd concur with that, his work blends in perfectly with the lads and the house style where matches are shorter and carry more weight with less work. He takes a rookie Fujita to his first I would say solid match and is a good hand as a midcard tag guy outside of his bigger singles work. I can't really say that he's got much of a peak though, his entire case is more or less founded on the fact that he was always at LEAST a competent wrestler with a strong floor that on occasion gets to prove that they should've been capable of a lot more.

I had Batista at #80 on my ballot. I think aside from the usual tired clichés ("he can't wrestle!" "overpushed!") Batista has an interesting rise in his wrestling career; he starts off objectively just rough in the ring, gets a super-push and actually starts to earn it rather than clashing and burning. Despite his advanced age his stuff from like 2005-onwards for the vast majority is really good barring Vince booking, he knows exactly when to be explosive and intense and when to build to a comeback or a huge momentum switch to get the crowd onside. You'd never think of him as a ring general but in a LOT of matches I was watching Batista was naturally just revolving around himself or dictating the pace which in many cases meant eternal bores like Kane were getting their best matches for a long while out of his efforts. Got more and more comfortable to the mic to the point that he was for the vast majority of the time a better heel than Orton and a better face than Cena, his last fulltime run especially was extremely entertaining and hell even his 2014 return where he was out of shape still had those stellar Shield tags, so why not include him?

Masanobu Fuchi was #83 on my ballot. My accusations of him being extremely dry as a worker at times aside, Fuchi is very much one of those that benefits a lot from his incredible longevity, even if the consequence of him never becoming a heavyweight means his coverage of footage from early years is lacking. He could take on any role required (and had the technical capacity to make anyone look good while doing it) and even his later years post-2000/2001 where he sinks into the undercard as an opener-style comedy act is pretty fun, he's very self-aware of his age and makes whole routines around being this old fogy who hurts his back off scoop slams or takes outside breaks when he exerts himself too much. It helps also that on occasion he gets to flex the fact that he's still in good shape with the occasional singles (Tenryu in 2004, Hayashi in 2010) and even his Yuma Anzai singles from 2024 with him at a extravagant 70 years of age. Fuchi is hurt by his occasional big matches feeling a little cold alongside the limitations of his style meaning he never got a giant feature slot at the top of the cards; with that said, he's still a incredibly sick worker for what we do have on paper, which it turns out it almost 3 decades worth of good material.

I had Jackie Sato #81 on my ballot. The democratization of public footage over the last decade has benefited Sato a lot since we've been able to see more of her actual longer-match work as opposed to a couple of TV snippets and/or forum hearsay, the conclusion I've seen is more or less that yeah, she was that good. Very strong at portraying intense battles of attrition, raw exhaustion at points, alongside being a pretty nifty grappler that knew how to really get a crowd interested in what she was doing even if it was relatively benign. Being in an era where you're surrounded by some of the best of all time like Jaguar or Masami for many would be an impossible task to stand out but Sato makes it seem almost easy. The JWP stuff as little exists is a lot of fun as well, even her legit shoot-match with Kandori is in itself a very enjoyable experience in just how fucking stubborn she is about the whole thing despite going in with a world champion Judoka contender. Definitely someone that I hope gets more eyes with the ballots as she's a very good worker and well beyond her time.

Mariko Yoshida will I think 100% be on the overall official list, I've seen too many ballots at this point with her included in a prominent position for that to be dismissed. Same with Meiko with her retirement match just a year ago still ringing true and well with voters.

Baba was #57 on my ballot. He doesn't quite have the striking visuals of Inoki or the intensity of Maeda but Baba's work is just really enjoyable for the most part, probably the most versatile giant in history as posts above mention, could do pretty much any style and keep up with the best in those fields without ever feeling like he was being dragged to the finishing line or that he felt out of place. A supreme tag worker, partly responsible with his own efforts to how AJPW managed to completely trump NJPW in tag work for so long because of just how important he made every big comeback or hot tag feel. Baba lacked the physicality of his peers in some respects but in terms of ring psychology and pacing there was probably no one better, which is handy since his physical deterioration came much quicker and significantly harsher than his contemporaries. He does a solid putting young Jumbo over in subtle manners (even if he was never explicitly giving him anything) and his old-man work is really good in being able to rely on his legend status without outright squashing or making the younger talent look lesser to him. His chemistry with Kobashi especially is fantastic, their 1998 birthday tag sequences I think go down as some of the best work Baba ever did from that decade.

Survival Tobita was #86 on my ballot. There's something to be said about a man who was for his entire career completely unathletic to a level unheard of and couldn't do a single move even remotely well still getting on a top 100, and that's mainly because Tobita for me mastered the postmodern idea of what we consider a deconstruction. He took elements from classic Showa-era wrestling protagonists and he distilled them into their basest of components over and over into where a scrubby fat bloke was fighting some grand fearsome creature of myth in a hotel parking lot in front of at best 100 people. He took what was considered to be the highest of professional sports and made it into the everyman's story, a tale where despite not having legendary fighting abilities or being 7-foot tall Tobita is still able to fight these beasts made of boxes or awfully-applied rubber masks over flimsy fabric. Even though he always loses, it never stifles his motivation to keep wrestling. And really, that's part of the charm with Tobita; he's a normal guy in a world of aces, icons, and fighting experts, and, ultimately, that's enough for him. He'll be more than happy to go in a losing effort with Jun Akiyama in a nigh-squash one week in one of his very few flashes of glory and be down in the back of dingy basement gyms the next doing what could be barely distinguished as "wrestling" to a audience of a couple dozen at best. If wrestling is an art form then Tobita is the man who tapes a banana to a wall and challenges you to confront his own work as its own field of art. Is it actually so? Regardless of your own answer, everyone will probably get something else out of it, and ultimately someone who can do that much in a field so homogenised has to be at least praised for the transgression.

Steve Williams was #93 on my ballot. I really think he gets overlooked as an overall act in favour of the Hansens and Funks even if he was heavily overpushed and didn't quite "get it" for a couple of years you have his incredible 90's AJPW run where he was not only a solid main event act with nigh-unbeatable physicality and intensity but was also quite the solid TV-style worker as well around that time, namely because he could carry that intensity into those lower-card tag matches while not compromising the quality. There are also his stints in WCW and NJPW as well but primarily his work there really cemented it for me.

Tadao Yasuda was I believe #98 on my ballot, and primarily for the reasoning provided above; he's a excellent wrestler when it comes to character dynamics and making the best out of whatever was in front of him, which for a 35-something guy who started wrestling to get into more debt I imagine was more vital than you might realise. From scrubby-loser having to be desperately saved by Hashimoto over and over again to main-event Inoki cult leader the man really did it all and did it much better than I think a lot of people at the time and at recent would grant him.

I eventually decided to slot Osamu Kido at #96. While one could very easily overlook him, I think any serious Puro watcher would inevitably have to slot him somewhere on their list either for his solid contributions in the UWF/NJPW tags or I would say equally impressive showings in UWF itself. Kido gets the occasional shine slot like in his 1994 G1 run or numerous fantastic matches against Fujiwara, and his longevity alongside that (being in decent to good matches from the 1980's to all the way to 2010) is extremely commendable.

Wilkins was #99 on my list. He's a great example of someone who perhaps didn't have the match material to be a top 100 in terms of fancy epics but played his role as "grimy American bully" to perfection with whoever he was slotted with, and those inevitable matches where he meets someone even worse than he is (Fujiwara, Shamrock) and gets the shit kicked out of him is great. He's a small fish that picks on even smaller and almost always finds comeuppance when he eventually gets too close to the actual big fish. Wrestling needs more people capable of that level of self-awareness rather than them all thinking they can be The Guy all at once.

Was on ballot: Mitsuharu Misawa Mayumi Ozaki Mariko Yoshida Meiko Satomura Masa Fuchi Masakatsu Funaki Masanobu Kurisu Megumi Fujii

Kashin was #100 on my GWE list (and I will be probably the only one with that opinion) he does have obvious low points but when I dug through around about 150+ matches of his all off the cuff I really enjoyed what he brought to the table, and seeing some of his more obscure stuff like the match with Young Lion Shibata or the Atlantis singles made me kinda realise "oh wait this guy IS cool my bad" which I always appreciate happening.

Seconded, Arai was #73 on my GME list and it was mainly because of his ridiculous attention to detail and ability to be watchable regardless of what he's doing or what opponent is in front of him. Few can pull that off reliably but with Arai it feels almost natural. Would also heavily recommend his Ironman match with Mikiya Sasaki from KOBE: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Pxt0Sy49zQ They go 60 and about half of it is in a headscissors of all things, but I legitmately watched the entire thing in one go just because it was that engrossing.