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.

Claudio might make a small push down the list but I think he's still going to be around the 80s slot regardless. A consequence of him being content to just be a solid mid-card tag specialist, perhaps. Sami I feel like might be viewed more positively since he did have a incredibly big babyface stint in the 2020's

For fun, I'll go through each of these and my predictions as to if they'll be higher or lower: Ospreay: Obviously will be higher, but to the extent depends on who's voting. He's a bit like marmite for a good bunch of people on here Jim Cornette: lol Tetsuya Naito: Might be a little higher due to his lackluster last couple of years. If we had this in 2018/19 I would definitely say he'd be higher up Zack Sabre Jr.: Absolutely lower, top 40/50 range. Eddie Kingston: Again absolutely lower, but again he's another divisive act on the board. I can see people sticking him from top 20 all the way to 80's/90's, so I think somewhere in the middle is where he'll lie. Dean Ambrose: Mox will be lower, but I don't actually think by that much since his title run has been very hit/miss for people. Ricochet: Lower, but not by any significant amount. Still won't make a top 100. Kenny Omega: MUCH lower down, I'm guessing he'll have a spot around about the low 20's/early 40's at worst. Tomohiro Ishii: Will make the top 100, he's only added to his case over time. Kota Ibushi: Wild ups and downs for this lad, I think if you asked during COVID he'd be in a much better spot. Will make the top 100 however will not be that far down. Minoru Suzuki: Will be higher, don't think his freelance work has really made a dent for many and his NJPW peaks are further and further out of the minds of those who voted in 2016 and first timers. Will not be in the top 100 Christian: 100% will make the top 100, I'm guessing about the 60/70 range. His AEW run has endeared him to a lot of fairly new fans and has opened new eyes to his past work. Andre The Giant: Higher if only because regency bias/no real explosion of early footage for him unlike in 2016. Brock Lesnar: Will be higher for many reasons, still think he'll be in that 50s/70s slot though. CM Punk: Again I think he'll be higher for many reasons AJ Styles: Lower, I think his late work has proven that he definitely has the chops to be a 20s/early 30s kind of candidate Mick Foley: Might be higher if only because again regency bias, but otherwise I think his spot around the position where it was in 2016 will be more or less the same. Dustin Rhodes: Lower due to his AEW stint. Not going beyond the late 20's though if even that Shawn Michaels: Very volatile, I think people will have him slightly lower John Cena: Will not budge from the #30 spot and if he does, it's going to be a fairly small movement either way. El Hijo del Santo: will be lower due to lucha footage being a lot more accessible, especially for a guy like Santo who benefits a lot from deep-cuts. Rey Mysterio Jr: MIGHT make top 5? I can definitely see it. Daniel Bryan: Again, depends on regency bias/who's voting. I can see him being #1, but also missing out to some key wrestlers.

A decent shindie hardcore brawler of the time, though people expecting the flash and showmanship of Onita from him will be epically disappointed. Matsunaga is a lot more brutal, more of a classical type where brawling and blood are the main game. He's decent at the brawling part (his kicks are solid before he busted them completely) and he gets bloody at will. I actually love his post-2000s appearances because of how unhinged they are. Here's a scrubby has-been gone mad from years of pain and disappointment pulling out a dozen knifes from his knee braces or putting people in SAW-type contraptions just for the hell of it. Sure he's sloppy, but who cares? You're not watching this stuff for clean technical masterclasses, you're watching it to watch a old fella do some painful shit that looks cool only for the people not doing it. If you have a taste for the bonkers, I would implore putting in the effort to find his performances from around that time. Would he get on a top 100? Probably not, but he's still quite entertaining nonetheless.

Solid grappler from the footage found, I just think it's not enough to really slot him in here. Maybe in the future when inevitably more material comes out can we then judge it properly.

I watched a little of WoS alongside his NJPW work, Roberts is pretty good, even if as said above the guy has the charisma of rustling toilet paper. He has a great sense of making technical aspects that would seem boring feel more exciting, adding in a sense of agency to a style that can seem very dry at points. Does best either with a game opponent willing to play his game (Fuchi, Fujinami, Kido) or forcing more trigger-happy wrestlers to work slower and smarter (Sayama). Might be worth looking out for depending on how much you rate WoS stuff.

Introduction These are a collection of write-ups/reviews of matches within AJPW that I found to be interesting/obscure enough to be worth examining in further detail, namely due to the fact that a lot of them go pretty under the radar to the usual main event material. The company goes through a lot of changes in the 90s; arguably in doing so it makes a lot more exciting for a viewer than the relatively stable decades prior. Oddities #1: 1995 Johnny Ace & Steve Williams vs. Jun Akiyama & Takao Omori (24.01.1995) Giant Baba, Kenta Kobashi & Mitsuharu Misawa vs. Johnny Ace, Johnny Smith & Steve Williams (29.01.1995) Akira Taue & Toshiaki Kawada vs. Danny Kroffat & Stan Hansen (17.02.1995) Johnny Ace vs. Stan Hansen (30.03.1995) Jun Akiyama vs. Stan Hansen (13.04.1995) Akira Taue vs. Johnny Ace (13.04.1995) Johnny Ace vs. Patriot (24.07.1995 Danny Kroffat vs. Yoshinari Ogawa (10.09.1995) Jun Akiyama, Masao Inoue & Satoru Asako vs. Ryukaku Izumida, Tsuyoshi Kikuchi & Yoshinari Ogawa (25.10.1995) Abdullah The Butcher & Giant Kimala vs. Dory Funk Jr. & Mighty Inoue (25.10.1995) Johnny Smith & Rob Van Dam vs. Kenta Kobashi & Mitsuharu Misawa (18.11.1995) Gary Albright & Stan Hansen vs. Kenta Kobashi & Mitsuharu Misawa (29.11.1995) Oddities #2: 1996 Tamon Honda vs. Toshiaki Kawada (12.01.1996) Johnny Ace, Lacrosse, Patriot & The Eagle vs. Kenta Kobashi, Kentaro Shiga, Mitsuharu Misawa & Satoru Asako (22.01.1996) Gary Albright vs. Jun Akiyama (31.03.1996) Mitsuharu Misawa vs. Toshiaki Kawada (14.04.1996) Giant Baba, Kentaro Shiga & Satoru Asako vs. Masanobu Fuchi, Masao Inoue & Yoshinari Ogawa (20.04.1996) Gary Albright & Toshiaki Kawada vs. Giant Kimala & Kenta Kobashi (03.06.1996) Brian Dyette & Kenta Kobashi vs. Jun Akiyama & Mitsuharu Misawa (29.06.1996) Gary Albright vs. Masanobu Fuchi (22.08.1996) Gary Albright vs. Takao Omori (05.09.1996) Danny Kroffat, Johnny Ace & Steve Williams vs. Giant Kimala, Kenta Kobashi & Patriot (28.09.1996) Gary Albright vs. Toshiaki Kawada (12.10.1996) Johnny Ace & Steve Williams vs. Kenta Kobashi & Patriot (same day) Danny Kroffat & Rob Van Dam vs. Kimala II & Ryukaku Izumida (18.10.1996) Akira Taue, Dory Funk Jr. & Giant Baba vs. Jumbo Tsuruta, Jun Akiyama & Mitsuharu Misawa (same day) Gary Albright & Sabu vs. Stan Hansen & Takao Omori (22.11.1996) Masanobu Fuchi & Yoshiaki Fujiwara vs. Satoru Asako & Tamon Honda (29.11.1996) Giant Kimala & Sabu vs. Maunakea Mossman & Yoshinari Ogawa (06.12.1996) Oddities #3: 1997 Akira Taue, Jun Izumida & Toshiaki Kawada vs. Bobby Duncum Jr., Johnny Ace & Steve Williams (02.01.1997) Mitsuharu Misawa vs. Tamon Honda (17.01.1997) Kenta Kobashi & Masao Inoue vs. Toshiaki Kawada & Tsuyoshi Kikuchi (16.02.1997) Akira Taue & Toshiaki Kawada vs. Gary Albright & Yoshihiro Takayama (01.03.1997) Gary Albright vs. Mitsuharu Misawa (22.03.1997) Johnny Ace vs. Stan Hansen (30.03.1997) Hayabusa & The Tornado vs. Kentaro Shiga & Maunakea Mossman (02.04.1997) Gary Albright vs. Toshiaki Kawada (same day) Hayabusa & Yoshinobu Kanemaru vs. Kentaro Shiga & Yoshinari Ogawa (19.04.1997) Daisuke Ikeda, Giant Baba & Rusher Kimura vs. Haruka Eigen, Masanobu Fuchi & Masao Inoue (18.05.1997) Hayabusa & Jun Akiyama vs. Kentaro Shiga & Takao Omori (06.06.1997) Daisuke Ikeda & Takeshi Ono vs. Tsuyoshi Kikuchi & Yoshinari Ogawa (29.06.1997) Gary Albright & Steve Williams vs. Johnny Ace & Kenta Kobashi (25.07.1997) Tamon Honda & Toshiaki Kawada vs. The Lacrosse & Yoshihiro Takayama (same day) Gary Albright & Steve Williams vs. Jun Akiyama & Mitsuharu Misawa (26.08.1997) Akira Taue, Jun Akiyama & Kenta Kobashi vs. Hiroshi Hase, Mitsuharu Misawa & Toshiaki Kawada (15.09.1997) Daisuke Ikeda, Satoru Asako & Tamon Honda vs. Giant Kimala, Rex King & Sean Morgan (27.09.1997) Jun Akiyama & Kentaro Shiga vs. Takao Omori & Yoshinobu Kanemaru (21.10.1997) Barry Windham & Justin Bradshaw vs. Johnny Ace & Kenta Kobashi (15.11.1997) Giant Kimala & Jun Izumida vs. Hayabusa & Jinsei Shinzaki (15.11.1997) Giant Kimala & Jun Izumida vs. Jun Akiyama & Mitsuharu Misawa (16.11.1997) Barry Windham, Gary Albright & Steve Williams vs. Bobby Duncum Jr., Stan Hansen & Takao Omori (05.12.1997) (other years to be added)

filtered

Yeah figured as such, those longer hour-long Specials aren't as publically available as the TV slots. You can still find them but it's somewhat of a struggle. Appreciated that you enjoyed the match itself ARSION is pretty good just as a solo watch, it's completely isolated from other promotions at the time so you don't need to know some sort of secondary "lore" to know what's going on. It's slow for the debut year but the late 90s are a joy to go through if you click with the house-style.

I can't say he was "cosplaying" (whatever that means) but he absolutely felt unfocused in a lot of the matches I seen of him, another kick/submission guy in a era where there were a LOT of those guys trying for the same style, only occasionally he'd do like a WoS spot but a bit slower and more clunky, or maybe even a dive or two. God forbid if he was a heel in the match too.

I think this reflects my views on Bryan a fair bit. I've watched a good bit of his best work, just never really seen the "GOAT" out of him. He seems like a guy who especially in his earlier days felt like someone trying to copy better wrestlers without really putting his own ideas into how to make them better/unique. Like Necro/Low-Ki had MUCH shorter peaks but they were so wildly unique in their presentation that you couldn't help but acknowledge them, even if you thought Necro "couldn't wrestle" or Low-Ki "just stiffed people" (I disagree with both of these ofc) you were pretty much forced to confront what they brought to the table. With Bryan, I see so many of him out there that I can just kinda phase him out. His actual matches around the time are still pretty bloody great, but they aren't GOAT-contender material. I'm not that wowed by them at the end of the day. With Bryan, I just kinda see that part of his career as a pseudo Minoru Tanaka where he's trying to do the "flashy Jr with kicks/submissions" style without actually drilling in what he wants to add on top of that. I feel like he got much better at realising his potential as a legendarily great babyface in his WWE/AEW material wherein he was forced to have shorter matches and so could not have the luxury of having 30+ Epics every time where he could just fill it as much as possible with stuff he wanted to throw in. This does start to creep into his AEW material again (especially with his hour long matches) but I think he handled it much better and I would say that by far that was his best balance. The other issue (and this is one I've talked with others about, including Joseph on this thread here!) is that I don't think Bryan cracked certain things that are required for a GOAT-status. He didn't really have stellar tag-team matches, for instance, only a short couple of showings in WWE where he was mostly using his incredible babyface energy for hot tags. One can't really find the carefully constructed masterpieces that the Pillars were involved in, or the incredible high intensity JWP-tags that defined those like Dynamite or Ozaki. They simply don't exist. I don't think he cracked being a heel either though that's a whole other bag of worms. Needless to say, I think he's still a pretty good performer, still say he was top 30/40, but the Platonic ideal that he represents just doesn't really click for me nor do I think was ever realised.