Ma Stump Puller

I've updated this thread with a couple extra matches I was able to dig up as of recent, including a Mickie Knuckles match, of all things!

some truly cursed selections here but was a fun watch

I think the Kid drop is kinda weird, his NJPW stuff is *still* quite strong and subsequent footage reviews have proven that he was quite solid in AJPW even way past his peak and beyond. It might be perhaps just people being tired of that style because of similarities to modern work or revisionism. I can't really pin any single element where there was a movement against him or anything, especially since Tiger Mask did very well by comparison.

Dump/Oz did happen in a tag match, otherwise yeah all good

This was a really interesting match all things considered, Mariko Yoshida and Mickie Knuckles both look and act from different universes so seeing them meet up for their first (and only) encounter seemed like something worth watching. I'd say right off the bat that if you're going into this expecting hardcore grindhouse Mickie Knuckles then go elsewhere because this is well before she'd gain that reputation (she was only barely 2 years wrestling at this point! ) and is more so her working a gritty underdog babyface role to the dominant returning champ in Yoshida who had won the last literation of this a couple of months ago. The match is predictively structured very much around Yoshida's tendencies, so we get a lot of scrappy sprawling and grappling for the early sections. I was shocked by how well Mickie held her own in these, granted, diminished grappling sequences, being able to push the agenda and defend reliably against any early pushes for submissions. Narrative early on frames Mickie as inexperienced but with a lot of heart, something that over time Yoshida gets increasingly more frustrated with by how she converts from straight grappling to throwing closed-fist punches to the head and stomach, though still goes back to the well of bullying her opponent with submissions. As expected Yoshida's work here is pretty solid, she throws out a variety of cool little holds here for the sake of variety, never feeling like she's losing interest and always making the holds themselves feel dynamic, well-worn with the two battling for control throughout. Mickie similarly in a different fashion excels here mostly at selling: she takes a DDT and does a cool little leg shake to showcase the trauma, or when her arm gets attacked with holds she keeps it straight and tucks it to the side like how you'd actually do if you broke or fractured something there. There's a care for attention in those little moments that you would honestly seldom see from people far, far more physically capable than her, and it's most likely why she became as endearing as she did alongside the batshit hardcore stuff. Yoshida however clearly carries the weight of the actual physical work here as the bully of the match to bring that out of her, so all in all I think there's a good balance there between the two that makes this much better than it had any right to be. At one point Mickie even starts doing Kawada kicks to the head which is worth the watch alone I'd imagine. Last third is a lot of fun with Yoshida trying desperately to shut down her opponent's momentum with long drawn out submission chains while Mickie manages to Hulk up and start no-selling, with her throwing some rough offence (though she did have a fairly good lariat....) that still works in the context of the match itself. Ultimately after a couple of signature Yoshida counter-for-counter exchanges with Mickie getting some near falls with rollups she gets caught one too many times and passes out in the Spider Twist, too tough to tap before it became cool to do so. This was a pretty sweet match for the reasons elaborated above, definitely another example of Yoshida carrying someone to perhaps a greater match than they'd be otherwise capable of doing but Mickie holds her own here and plays the role of the outmatched native well enough with the occasional flush move to boot. It's an oddity for sure, but one you'd actually come out thinking it was worth the venture for its contents rather than simply the wacky aesthetic, if that makes any sense.

Yoshinari Ogawa/Bryan Danielson Kobashi/Tenryu Vader/Nick Bockwinkel Fujiwara/Necro Butcher Yuki Ishikawa/Giant Baba all of those would slap

He'll be probably lower than #2 by then, I think this was his one real big moment with his final retirement stint fresh in people's minds to get the #1 spot and that's passed. If he does maybe come back for a match or two will perhaps decide that, but for now this is I believe going to be his peak. If they prove me wrong 10 years later feel free to meme about it with this for as long as you want lol But yeah quick aside, I joined the forums in 2021 to pass the time during COVID, had a lot of fun building up to this GWE by pushing my favourites with agenda posting and been very happy seeing people like Keita Yano or Carlos Amano inexplicably not only rank but do so pretty well all things considered with dozens of ballots cast with them featured. Job's not done until I see them on the top 100 though as with a couple of others, so I will be still at work here to make that happen. In all seriousness though thanks to everyone who voted as well as those who were involved in vetting ballots and nominations (one of which included me apparently). It's a huge effort and definitely not for the faint of heart. Hopefully we'll still be around for 2036

On a serious note I don't think anything on his part in terms of like people realising his stuff was somehow ass, there's just more varied taste with the people voting now as opposed to in prior editions where it was almost unilateral gospel that AJPW was the greatest thing on Earth, Manami Toyota was the biggest female star of the 90's and NJPW had far worse matches than them. Tastes have branched off over the last decade or so and there is no one single line of thought that the majority subscribes to. There's also maybe the possibility that people might have been burned by his post-90's work because Kawada is quite spotty after the early 2000's, idk I don't remember people being crazy for him and Muto in like 2005 botching nearly every big spot they were trying to do.

More based, for one. I thought Tanahashi was a much better heel than face overall, his invader work just hits a lot harder than a lot of his more pure babyface outings and lets him flex his Shawn-influences a lot more overtly than the occasional flashy move. He's an incredible heater and it sucks that aspect of him in NJPW very rarely came up bar the occasional flash where he'd skirt the rules in a big match or tease.

I'd bet on Kong making it actually, she has a lot more exposure with modern voters through her work in the 2020's and her case is more biased towards longevity which typically is something more considered than things like peak or, god willing, how many times they won the WWE championship.

His Naito match was solid and his Kaito series of matches the two had were pretty entertaining. Looking back on it Old Man Muto in NOAH as much as some people memed on it (and it was at some points quite the meme) was quite an endearing long term story all about battling against his limits and needing every little trick to survive against a never-ending torrent of challengers. That's honestly one of the main reasons why I had him so low on my list, his ability to consistently reinvent his offence/presentation to adapt to the zeitgeist is almost unrivalled.

they weren't burned on his dogshit ajpw matches because they only started watching after that stint thankfully ended lol

I had Shinobu Kandori #26 on my ballot and I'm pretty good with that selection. She's a breath of fresh air in a 90's scene that can get overindulgent to a fault by for the most part just focusing on super uncooperative scraps, but not going overboard to the point where the match quality is compromised. Great grappler with a keen sense to give and take when it matters, also has shockingly good longevity past the 90's with her carrying Dump to her best match post-retirement and holding her own against Meiko in 2007. Her ability to make simple moves like a choke or armbar feel like "you're fucked" insta-death moves that everyone fears and no one wants to be stuck in is pretty unmatched. My mind boggles at the idea that she was considered a lump at some point in time, probably the same brain-trust that considered Hotta bad for being "too stiff" lmao

Nominations are there for mainly two reasons; #1 It encourages forum discussion (why did you nominate x, what matches do you recommend etc etc.) #2 It's much more democratic than a free-for-all Like I had a couple of people asking "why nominations?" It's because it allows people who want to make their unique or interesting takes to make them properly and get more coverage as opposed to just turning up with a list that says Toru Yano at like #8 and not elaborating. The way we have allows people to get interested in wrestlers or styles they would otherwise not even sneeze at normally which is always a cool thing, I know from experience that my nominations led people to watching and eventually becoming fans of said nominates which wouldn't be possible otherwise. There's also the matter of logistics, we have over 700 people nominated (!!!) all with individual pages, if there was no requirement how would we handle making new pages? It would still involve people having to say "hey does x have a discussion page yet?" and having to manually add them to the pile. It's not like the process is extremely tedious as it is when all you need is a name and 3 matches to recommend. You don't even need to be on the forum to do it, in fact a good couple were added via other outlets like Discord.

Yeah he's decent enough as a contrast foil to the actual great workers (Maeda/Funaki/Fujiwara etc etc) but when UWFI kicks off and he's giving himself like giga-pushes and never losing to anyone ever that era can certainly fuck off

It's a combination of her not being as widely venerated as Hokuto/Toyota by a lot of Western sources and her post-prime career being pretty forgettable as a whole and difficult to document. Toyota had a plentiful veteran career by comparison and part of Hokuto's myth is her relatively short but near-insurmountable 90's peak that burns out as the decade ticks to an end.

Very happy that Keita Yano finished #252. Going from a guy that 99% of people would've went "who?" in 2016 to having over 30 ballots cast and in the top 200 a decade later is quite something.

I had Yoshinari Ogawa #24 on my ballot and was the high vote. My thoughts on Rat Boy are I'd say at this point well documented, I've spent more time than anyone else reasonably should have watching everything related to him from the 2000/2010's, mostly because I think his floor is still indisputably the widest out of anyone else I've really seen. He was fantastic for almost 3 decades-worth of material, even his momentous 2020's work with Kaito made him seem someone perfectly capable of working far greater than his ambition at the time allowed and he kept being sporadically amazing up until his final great performance with the Ridgeway singles in 2023. Before then you have, I believe, one of the finest career spreads you could possibly dream up; someone who was wrestling pretty well in the 1980's, was apart of the legendary AJPW six-man tags in the early 1990's, benefited immensely from the wider Jr heavyweight coverage of the mid 90's, then Misawa picks him up and we get his beginnings as a fantastic scrappy babyface that fills in the emotive/bumping hole that late-Misawa was leaving behind. He carries that into NOAH where he gets his career peak as champion in the early 2000's before spending the rest of the decade as an incredible multi-role talent who was either having these out-there British Catch matches with Doug Williams or getting over new fresh talent like KENTA and co. He exceled in tags, being the more watchable out of Misawa and co during their very long stint as champions with his stellar attention to detail and capacity to make other people seem like complete killers even if they were uber down the card (see Inoue/Saito etc etc). The neck injury changes a lot about his style. He has to do less stooge-bumping where he bounces all over the place and far more focus on crafty technical attacks, no longer being able to wrestle heavyweights but instead the Jr division exclusively. Could you imagine if, say, your favourite wrestler had to spontaneously wrestle in a whole different division? Most I feel like would struggle with the transition (especially in NOAH, where their Jr division was significantly more high-spotty) but Ogawa nails it from his first match and then the subsequent decade afterwards by knowing how to get these guys just enough room to do their thing without either slowing them down completely or compromising his own style to suit their own. His tag stint with Zack Sabre Jr I'd say from viewing made Sabre a significantly more refined act, letting him focus on creative limb-work and how to carry that momentum throughout a longer match without slowing down too much or giving up on the effort, and he gives him one of his greatest singles matches as well for his farewell match to boot. He becomes a lot more of a role-player as the decade continues, but you still have him giving people like Minoru Suzuki or Marufuji their best work or showcasing solid acts like Yuya Susumu to a wider audience. It cannot be understated how many times where, despite the match not being great, Ogawa is ALWAYS in a position where his work makes sense or is attempting to make it seem greater than it is. His only real weakness being that he had a tendency to drag out matches a bit longer than expected, a real Brian Wilson-ism where he tries fitting in too much all at once where the work can feel like it's making other elements inessential or compromising the quality as a whole but this is extremely rare and only truly comes up when his opponent is not capable of making the structure of the match (limb-work selling, comebacks etc) feel easier to watch than it should. So yeah, 3 decades of great matches, for me the undisputed best at going for limbs (even stuff like the eyes or head aren't safe!) one of the finest technical workers of his time etc etc. He should have been lower and it's a shame that despite heavily adding to his case since 2016 he finishes far above that rating. I suspect that his tendency towards subtle, smart wrestling and lack of GIF-able moments like certain other wrestlers was probably the main contributing factor but ig that's how it goes

I had Yoshihiro Takayama at #31 on my ballot. Takayama is one of my most personal projects as I covered basically every single AJPW and UWFI/Kingdom match he was involved in (as documented elsewhere!) all because I wanted to prove that the man had classics well before he started having them by the dozens during his peak. I believe in the process of doing so that this was conclusively shown as such. Takayama as a worker has clear weaknesses; he was a man who, in his first couple of years in the UWFI, was conclusively not a great wrestler. He struggled to stretch his matches out to a reasonable extent and keep interest, struggled to reliably utilise his lumbering size, and struggled to match the more refined technique of his contemporaries. What does he do? He hones in on what he can do well; strike exchanges, intensity, and a great German suplex. And he does this over and over and over until those things are so refined that you stop caring about said weaknesses because he's just so good at throwing a knee to the head or slamming some pour soul on his head that you forget about the rest. He's a man who through sheer fucking effort became inevitable through drilling a couple of good qualities to the ground until they became more or less perfect. Same with his AJPW stuff, he comes in as a breath of fresh air as this short-match shooter and over time starts to get better and better at the house-style. He never becomes capable of doing super long affairs, but his understanding of pacing and how to escalate get much better to the point where he's outright dictating the tempo of a match completely off his presence alone. It's important to know all of this in context of his early 2000's peak because it's all learning curves that he has at that point completely overcome to become the finished main event product he was during those years. He very clearly had limitations but surpassed them completely and in doing so became one of the greats. After the peak is where I think my appreciation for the man grows more though as his stroke takes him out for two whole years and in doing so changes how he works. He's no longer quite as athletic as he was nor as fast but learns how to instead rely on his physicality. He becomes more of a old-school giant, he looms over people, works slow to accentuate their speed, focuses more on beating the piss out of people in control sequences as opposed to more back and forth stuff. It's a conscious choice on his part (I've seen house show matches where he almost flies around hitting people with dropkicks, for instance) and it clearly showcases at this point his capacity to find a role and act as it as well as possible. I'd describe his career at this point as a character actor actually. He's someone who is never the top dog but is instead always making the other person (s) involved look like either world-beaters or downtrodden victims waiting for their big comeback, in tags this goes further as he becomes the enforcer to guys like KENTA or Suzuki to back up their smarmy personas when they're getting componence. There's a loss of some raw capacity (speed, later on mobility) but the trade is even more versatility and as such his case is not only having a insanely top ceiling but also having a surprisingly wide floor where he can go in with anyone in any promotion and get reactions and solid work out of it. For me going back to his stuff meant I basically realised he had to be just at the edge of top 30 if only because of his shaky years both at the beginning and end (last year or so of his career he really can't do much of anything, unfortunately) but you've got so many positives that they outweigh those by a mile and a half.

I had Kaori Yoneyama at #39. I think what I said above suffices for my voting justification enough, she's supremely consistent with a near unsurpassed floor with lots of peaks thrown here and there when she actually wanted to stretch her wrestling muscles more than standard. Even if we erased her entire multi-year long stints doing i'd say good comedy matches she still has miles of matches to not only work with but fully endorse. Was a no-brainer for me.

Carlos Amano being #360 is great, big thanks to all 21 other people who found her as awesome as I did

Their trio of matches is interesting I think, they get progressively worse with each one because of their innate need to increase the amount of time with every match to the point where their last 40 minute affair is better in terms of the grappling but goes so long (40 minutes!) that you lose the will to live well before then

I had her low so I'm the opposite, pretty sick that so many were inclined to throw her on based on such a small sample size.

Oh no she does show up quite a bit during the early 2000's for JWP, this was just when they didn't have television slots so everything we have of that era is fancam, including a 30+ minute two out of three falls tag that reputation has it as a near-classic if memory serves.

I considered her for a bit but I hadn't watched her early JWP work (including matches that are only available on fancams). Maybe her weird 2020's comeback where she shows back up for one good match a year might swing her forward in 2036?