Ma Stump Puller

Inokism Mabel > World's Largest Love Machine > Big Daddy Voodoo No dispute

Masao Inoue Alright, hear me out on this one. Inoue isn't really much of a hand in his AJPW stuff: I've had the unfortunate task of watching most of it in action: but he evolves into probably the best "fish out of water" wrestlers ever, a pure and true underdog that couldn't even be called that, because at least underdogs win big matches sometimes. Inoue wins nothing, but somehow manages to get the crowd to rally endlessly behind him in every endeavour he makes: either teaming up with the old guard to try to get a big win or staring down some of the meanest, nastiest wrestlers on the roster, he's a true master of getting the most out of a considerably limited moveset, using a mix of comedy alongside genuine selling to get a audience to laugh, cheer, or even boo him. He won't amaze you with Terry Funk tier selling or astonish with epic workrate, but he'll rake the eyes really good, and on the (very) rare occasion he gets that Backbreaker off, the roof almost always nearly falls with how much fanfare he gets. The best "I know I'm bad but that's my gimmick anyway" worker I've ever seen. He's more Rocky than Rocky ever was. Katsuhiko Nakajima vs. Masao Inoue (NOAH 14.06.2020) Akitoshi Saito & Masao Inoue vs. Go Shiozaki & Katsuhiko Nakajima (NOAH 04.08.2019) Kenta Kobashi & Masao Inoue vs Jun Akiyama & Akitoshi Saito (NOAH 14.2.2014) Jun Akiyama vs. Masao Inoue (NOAH 23.04.2006) Akitoshi Saito & Masao Inoue vs. Mitsuharu Misawa & Yoshinari Ogawa (NOAH 10.09.2004) Masao Inoue vs. Yuji Nagata (NOAH 14.05.2003) Masao Inoue & Tamon Honda vs. Mitsuharu Misawa & Yoshinari Ogawa (AJPW 27.11.1999) Kenta Kobashi & Yoshinobu Kanemaru vs. Masao Inoue & Toshiaki Kawada (AJPW 02.01.1998)

He gets DQ'd almost automatically for his rather bad post-prime performances from around about the mid 2000's onwards. Solid in his prime but I couldn't in good faith have him there when all of that is lingering underneath the surface.

He's gotten better since his mostly terrible "I'm trying to be Kobashi guys!" style that even NOAH had to poke fun at by having him get murdered by Sasaki when he tried to do the same dances. He's gotten a better grove of what he wants to be and his 2020 run is pretty solid beyond some eh title defences. He's very emotive and works best in not overly long matches, of which he seems to stumble greatly in terms of pacing. I've never watched a long Shiozaki match where I've been able to keep my attention because he kinda just reverts to the same habits over and over again. Give him 20 to 30 minutes with a competent opponent, he's great. Anything longer starts to drift. It's not a huge issue but because they have tried endlessly to make him a Kings Road style guy, it bites him in the ass more often than not. That being said outside of his AJPW stuff (which is mostly good because his habits were curbed with the change of scenery mostly) and said 2020 run, really not much to grade him on outside of the occasional good match now and then. Don't really care for his tag stuff and he struggles when his opponent isn't bothering. For me, there's not enough for him to be anywhere major on the list. He'll be on the higher spots for sure.

One match that I feel personally gets overlooked is his Champion Carnival match with Hansen in 2000. Hansen is a week or so away from retiring formally and barely managed to get past Shinzaki for the first round, and Tenryu knows that and goes into here aiming to kill his momentum early. There's some brilliant tension between the pair as Hansen's put on the backburner for once against someone who's equally as dangerous as him, and he has to use every trick possible to stay in the running. It's a great example of Tenryu playing that stiff bastard as he's so vicious with his shots here, debilitate in how he works over Hansen's shoddy back for leverage, and how he's able to show that malice in small stuff, like aiming his strikes exactly for that area beyond all else or just in how he delays his chops slightly so he can aim for Hansen's throat better. Small details and callbacks to older material together (like they outright steal the infamous Tenryu/Hansen v Baba/Kimura opening but somehow dial it up even more extreme than before) really add to the whole deal. Workrate wise it wouldn't be anything special, but the occasion, the history, and that extreme violence just come together to a great little bout. That's always something I noticed: the guy is great at the small little details that you wouldn't really notice first viewing, from his facial expressions to how he sells fatigue over time and whatnot. It's impossible to not put him in the top 10 for all of the reasons already above and more. A insanely intelligent wrestler.

I love Fujita as this Inoki-Ism caveman who isn't a very good striker, was a mediocre wrestler, had no real good work in submissions, but a dude who could just consistently run someone down by brawling with them or just kicking their head off: it's like a RPG character that put all of their experience into being a huge brickhouse that has one way of fighting. Want to have a slow, calculated match with rich nuance, maybe a Kings Road build? Fujita doesn't give a shit, he's gonna spit mouth sanitizer or throw you off the roof of Korakuen. Dude can only work Inoki-Ism shoot-style, take it or leave it, he's fucking wrestling you to the mat or hitting you with the stiffest shots possible. The way that he just almost intrudes on anyone and gives them a hard time because of that fact, because he doesn't try to wrestle a slow methodical "epic" or a million false finishes, he just beats your ass and wins or you do it to him even more violently and win: that's a special aura that I think gives him a unique status of menace regardless of where he is on the card. Despite him showing up randomly to stare down Nakajima the other night, I still got hyped up, because I know he's gonna be a huge problem for the champ. He can brawl with young-guns trying to make a name for themselves, go for slugfests against more equal opponents, or just run through people and get some really compelling performances and reactions from wrestlers who usually don't bother (Saito for one) as they struggle against this relic kicking their brains loose. Aces can face him and reliably place themselves at risk because Fujita has that dangerous reputation that'll never vanish properly. As a pure wrestler yeah, he's not focused at all, isn't smooth whatsoever, can't even bump correctly most of the time and his matches usually follow few narratives. Those narratives are all he needs, because he's Fujita, and he's always been this single-minded fighter that brute-forces any problem he encounters. You take it, or you leave it. I think I need to stick him on the top 100 just because he's so good when he's on the ball in that format. Guilty pleasure for sure.

These are interesting points that I definitely think provide some questions that can be discussed further. How important is something like matwork to overall ring quality? Many of the most lauded top quality Japan guys like Shingo, Okada, Kobashi, hell even some of the outside picks like Nagayo (all people you seem to enjoy a fair bit) all had really unconvincing mat work at all, really. Okada got shit on for a lot of his 2020 stuff because of his obsession with getting the Money Clip over and subsequent work around it and Kobashi's technical stuff is near non-existent bar some small examples, and even then he couldn't get a crowd over with just that alone. I would much rather see Misawa outsmarting Ogawa on the mat (of which they built a whole series of matches around the concept) or him trying not to die when Hase's twisting his arm around than basically all of these guys trying to do purely technical stuff. Not everyone can be a demon on the mat like a Fujiwara or whatnot. That being said, it's a definite low spot in Misawa's repertoire: you see him struggling especially in the later half of the 90's when the UWF lads come down and he's incapable of working their style to any real degree, leading to some weirdly disjointed matches. There was one 1998 six-man in particular where him and Masahito Kakihara have probably one of the most awkward exchanges ever because both men don't play ball with the other and scuffle a lot. As for the rest of your points, I do agree with them to a degree. His Shield matches are great (how much of that is the Shield being themselves is up to the viewer) but limited. I've never seen Danielson get over super mediocre talent in high-stakes tag bouts like Misawa had to do for years and years, as well as having to mix up his exchanges from stiff exchanges, brawls, spot fests, etc etc. Again, this is mostly because of the booking at the time, but it's still a issue. As for your point in versatility, I disagree about your point about Misawa not having the range to do brawls (or at least against guys like Butcher) because I've seen him have terrific matches sub-prime against Morishima where half of the match is him getting fucking wrecked with huge shots, lariats, thrown around the place, etc. He has a trash brawl with a near cancer-ridden Kodo Fuyuki in 2002 where he's put through a table, takes some horrific bumps as well and the crowd eat up everything. Like sure, Misawa The Ace never had the chance to do those kind of matches (as you address in your post-ish) but when he was allowed to let his hair down and become this outsider enforcer like he was in his ZERO-ONE matches, he's still fantastic. These kind of questions are always hard to tell because of how chemistry works in general: you'd never think that two greats like Misawa and Hansen wouldn't work at all well together from first hand exposure.

I think Edge deserves a rethread after his return to the ring. The guy's been out for years and years and is almost in his 50's, but has almost instantly returned to having solid TV or longform matches (ignoring his fucking dreadful Wrestlemania bout) including getting Orton to some of his most compelling work in years, a fun extended feud with Reigns, as well as a utterly amazing series of matches with Crazy Seth despite having to have their big blowoff feud as a opener on a Saudi show. If he isn't on a top 100 before, this probably won't change a lot for you, but it's definitely something to consider as he's really had a good stint so far.

Misawa might have some obvious lower points in his career but his highs are terrific and beyond Danielson's by a far bit. Danielson really only has his RoH title run in 06 as a truly all-inspiring run that should be regarded as well as it is, while Misawa has multiple years starting from the early 90's where he's just on the ball all the time. Even when he's horribly banged up and brought back early to fix up a declining Kobashi title stint, he's still having these tip top matches where he's putting it all on the line. Danielson has really only his RoH title run to compare and while it's still fantastic, it's not up to the mark of which Misawa was at those few years of dominance. Earth's Champion and The New Daniel Bryan was a fun character-driven reign but it wasn't breaking new ground either. I guess one thing to also mention is that Danielson never really cracked tag format matches as well. He has his fun comedic work with Hell No that I loved, but the matches were.....not very good. They face Rhodes Scholars like a billion times and they mostly are in undercard bouts with nothing tag teams or just random people paired together. I know booking was mostly why that was, but they weren't very engaging in the ring either apart from some comedy spots. The best tag stuff I can recall is his short stints in NOAH and some select matches in RoH where he's surrounded by other great talent. Compare that to Misawa who has legendary wars with the Demon Army, some super underrated runs with Ogawa as tag champions, hell even his early Super Gen work with Kawada is excellently done as well, not withstanding their hidden gems like the 30 minute draw with the Funks way back in 90. The NOAH runs in particular where him and Ogawa are ones to point out because they aren't always facing amazing talent: getting guys over like Bart Blaxson, Donovan Morgan, Sano and other less than stellar talent (cough Inoue and Saito cough) to these near main event big matches is FAR from easy as anyone can testify, but they manage to do it most of the time. That's one aspect where I think Misawa absolutely crushes it in terms of the versatility argument. If we go just by longevity: yes, Danielson takes it, namely because older Misawa was in a rough position where he couldn't be afforded the same chances to take care of himself. I think there's more to the tale than just that, through.

I feel bad for Mcintyre because his final big break and title reign was all in COVID-land, so he didn't get that crowd buzz that he should have gotten when he went over Lesnar and whatnot. For what it's worth, I feel like he's a solid upper-card guy that can do TV length matches, the more showmanship-orientated WWE style long bouts and then also go the workrate route. He's also really underrated when it comes to getting better showings from people than they would otherwise, taking Ziggler to a fantastic babyface performance in their feud together, as well as (somehow) getting a good match out of Carlito lol. He excels in beefy matches but also as a big man alongside smaller guys, having really fun showings against Ricochet and a whole host of smaller indie lads. He doesn't bump like a maniac for them but he also makes sure to feed them just enough to get crowds invested when they do finally get past him. That being said, I feel like there's some somewhat wide holes in his style: he can't really do slower matches and he's not particularly very good at pacing these kind of matches. His work benefits from having a hot start, interference, him dominating, something to kick it off, because him trying to do holds and stuff is very dull. He also struggles at times in trying to get fire out of guys that really can't be bothered: some of his Orton matches suffer from this immensely as his....well, "habits" really cause them to drag, and Mcintyre isn't dynamic enough to counterbalance that. He's good in a lot of areas, but I can say I've never watched a truly amazing match out of him: everything is either decent to quite good. Even the suggested matches above from my memory weren't ones I was super crazy about, just kinda there: you have fun with them, but you aren't exactly going off the walls either. He still feels like a workaround and not a true main event, "top of the company" guy like Roman is. For a top 100 based purely off consistency, he MIGHT get on, especially for him making the best out of being in the dire TNA at the time. Top 100 in general for now? I wouldn't say so. Give it a few more years and maybe a actual title run with crowds.

Porky is just one of those guys that I've found endless entertainment from: even watching a random Dragondoor Project undercard from 2005 where the guy is fairly well past it in terms of workrate but still manages to get some of the biggest pops of the match (despite sharing the ring with Tiger Mask and Gran Hamada) by having solid power sequences alongside him either smacking or accidently knocking over his brother a lot lol. I wouldn't say he's a fine technical master or whatnot but he's incredibly good at what he does and has great timing for how he blends both being a idiot, but being a STRONG idiot that can knock people around into a formula that somehow makes sense without looking unconvincing. If I want to have fun watching a match first and foremost, I check out him and his brothers in action. Definitely worth a spot on the top 100 easy.

What always bugged me was the "Fallen Angel" shit: he comes down in a cool robe, spooky music, cuts dark promos with fancy editing and then just wrestles like a regular indie-joe that you see around every corner. It's like if Undertaker did his whole deal and then just wrestled like Mean Mark. I know it's a silly thing to pick on, but I feel like it's relevant here in that I just felt like Daniels had no sense of showmanship or entertainment beyond his big moves for a long while. He does those big moves REALLY well, mind you, but there's no fire, no anything behind what he's doing. Rag on Michaels all you want, but when he did his big spots, they felt urgent, dramatic: when he was taking on big monsters and having to do big dives and high-risk stuff just to equalise, you knew he was in danger. Daniels just casually nailing his BME after 20 minutes of taking brutal offence bugs me out, and it happens nearly every match. I think the Kawada quote about a noob Akiyama sums it up: “You’ve got all these moves; now it’s time to learn to wrestle.” Daniels can do the moves, but it took him a while to actually get the hang of not needing to do so much and instead focusing in on what he was good at. For his credit, I felt like he got much better on the mic (him in Bad Influence was probably one of the most entertaining acts in the shipwreck of early 2010's TNA) and paced his matches slower. He had a Two out of Three Falls AJ encounter in 2015 that I think might be their best because both men aren't just doing moves, but creating a narrative, making sense. He has a RoH match with Adam Cole that I really like, because when Cole gets his arm bashed, Daniels focuses in on it, builds offence around working the bad arm, building to bigger and bigger spots. Earlier Daniels would've probably just kept to the same tune. It's that reason that I actually like his later material better than when he was in his prime, because he's a lot more watchable when he's being a smart vet than a over ambitious guy with way too much athleticism for his own good. Same deal with Mutoh to a degree. Does he stand out in a top 100? I think he actually has a shot at 90 to 100, especially for his later material. He gets really good for a couple of years before his age starts to creep up on him but for those years, he's definitely worth checking out. Vet Daniels having top matches in every random indie he can get his feet in the door is a lot better than his X-Division days for extended viewing in my opinion. He has dynamic matches with a wide, wide host of wrestlers, always being able to get more out of them than perhaps they could do otherwise while pacing the big spots he can still do fantastically.

Again, I can get why Chavo gets on a nomination ballot but erm, no, not at all. He coasted on being on Eddie's incredibly large back for a while before having no luck trying to branch off himself to no avail. I think the WCW story of Chavo doing a entrance with a toy horse that one time for the fun of it and then having to use that as a gimmick to get any cheers because everyone was used to it says a lot about how creatively he thought about really anything. His characters were always one-dimensional trite, even when he was out of the WWE. He's not bad or anything and you can trust him to have a decent TV match but that's really it. Guys like Miz completely outwork him in that branch as well and he's not even here, so I can't imagine him getting anywhere close to a top 400, let alone 100. Again, if you like fairly decent consistency from your wrestlers, there's a lot better to be picking from.

This relating to their 1996 singles match? Super agree with that, I was pretty high on that until that spot: just sucked the life out of the crowd and didn't look at all convincing. He's fine when it comes to shooty stand-up but grappling tends to be a weird avenue for him in general.

hirochan60 Is mostly non-wrestling and random sumo stuff, but has a ton of camcorder Inoki/RJPW/Onita content that wasn't televised/is VERY difficult to find publicly. TigerMask666 Has a huge amount of Joshi discs and tapes uploaded publicly including huge JWP/AJW dumps. Manjigatame Has a lot of hard to come by ZERO-One and general Puro content. Also has custom collections for some lesser NOAH wrestlers that might prove useful. FMWdojo I mean, it's kinda obvious, isn't it? A lot of FMW stuff, official tapes, etc. Al Balog Posts a ton of early 2000's AJPW. Found basically Muto's entire Champion Carnival stuff here. Matt D Is the man when it comes to camcorder/vintage wrestling clips. Pro Wrestling Gold Mine Has some solid Sabu collections alongside some very obscure indies. hkkaneWM2012 Has a lot of mid-2000's NOAH.

I've been watching a ton of 90's/2000's Tiger Mask (namely RJPW work) and while there's some stinkers within the batch, he's definitely got a improved case for this based on what I've seen. Considerably adaptable in tags or singles against a super wide variety of opponents from a good match series with Suzuki to 5-minute sprints with a noob Ibushi and Otani to a brutal Takayama match all the way to having probably the last great match with old man Tenryu, can still go surprisingly well for his age and size, good technical stuff etc. Somehow also had a decent feud with no-knees Onita that didn't completely stink up the place. I'll have a more detailed examination up soon but I would suggest searching around for some of his stuff there.

Yeah Miz was never a workrate darling or anything but he's incredibly good at the fundamentals and works around them excellently with his heel persona: when matched with someone who can equally perform on his level as a babyface, you get some actually really great matches at times. Never forget that it was Miz that got mid-card hell Ziggler to maybe his best match in years.

I can get why she's here to a certain extent considering we have Trish (who could be argued as having less big big matches to work with than Mickie despite her having more of a impact overall) on here as well, albeit that wasn't exactly taken very seriously. She's had some super nothing title runs (not her fault of course because booking and the divisions at the time being bare bones as shit until way later) and I always used to cringe when she was in TNA trying to work with people who mostly couldn't really work (at least 5+ matches anyway) albeit she did eventually start to get better opponents and brought some legitimacy to the division. For what it's worth, I feel like she's a fairly solid act that even in her very very early days showed a lot of promise and athleticism right off the bat, and did eventually mature to a good upper-card act that sorta became a expert in carrying less able acts to good matches. Top 100 is the issue through, because as other have said there's a LOT of acts that were more beneficial in that they got to work with great opponents right off the bat and have far far better high ends than her at the moment. I didn't feel anything for the Purrazzo matches (maybe that's because I just don't like her style at all lol) and James's high ends are few and far between to compare. Like she's had good matches, but the vast majority of them for me just equate to just being, well, decent. She's sound in the ring and showed she could work with some of the better wrestlers but I would need to really see some truly big performances for her to have a shot, even as a outsider pick. Give her a few more years with her current workrate, then I'll rethink this.

Never really got Ambrose/Moxley at all, he just seems like a overly obnoxious "tough guy" stereotype with some loose brawling behind him and surprisingly sloppy wrestling at times. He's good when he has to rely less on his rep and focuses on having fun matches that don't drag a lot. NJPW was the only place where I actively tolerated his antics because he didn't always turn his matches into trash brawls with crazy spots, which he always seems to devolve into when given too much leeway: it works in big blood feuds (Ishii match excluding) but I hated his KENTA match and whatnot. As noted above, he's also very noticeable when he's not really engaged and struggles to have B-show performances without looking like he'd rather be elsewhere, of which he has YEARS of WWE material where that's the case. He's got great energy when he's on, the opposite is sadly true as well. The guy needs a hot crowd, a fairly solid opponent, and the right conditions suiting him to have a properly great match. Not saying he hasn't had matches that I've enjoyed a ton, but way out of the top 100 zone by far. Maybe there's a X-Factor I'm not seeing.

It's sad when this 6 year old comment still applies to Dolph today. I remember people used to go crazy about the guy because he could do a good flip sell and had some solid enough matches back in the day, but he's mutated into this terrible Shawn Michaels/Hennig clone without any of the charisma, showmanship, or any of the character work that either man had both outside and inside the ring. The fact that people maintain that he wasn't booked strong despite a huge amount of title shots and main event outings is beyond me. He's had plenty of time to improve or innovate, he just doesn't want to do so. Perfectly fine as a low-mid card act but he's really bad at doing these fake big epic main event matches that take 30 or so minutes and devolve into finish spamming. He's the kind of guy that seen guys take insane bumps but didn't really get the pacing or the buildup to them, so he just copies it randomly on almost any form of big offence. Those factors end up making you incredibly fatigued after a while because there's NOTHING else apart from that. When Miz + the threat of retiring needs to emotionally carry you to your most engaging match in years, it says too much about how hollow his style really is. Nowhere on the top 200 for me.

The January 20 one? Yeah, that's great. Love the fact that Taue's obsession with hitting his big bombs to punish Akiyama for his stubbornness keeps costing him his advantage, and how that urge to be Mr. Big Bully Taue fucks him over in the end

I wish I could put Honda on the 100 but he's just so inconsistent. Most of AJPW material is him being either incredibly green or being incredibly lazy: what I mean by this is that he essentially just drags a match along with headlocks, headbutts, and maybe the odd other move or two. He's so minimalistic that it really hurts him a ton when considering overall match quality. Honda has some pretty good matches, but they are spaced between a lot of lazy bullshit, which is annoying given his incredible work in NOAH and further beyond. He CAN be great, he just actively chose not to do so unless stakes were involved, and even then you can argue that these were created by having world-class wrestlers getting him to his best. What bugs me even more is that his rookie stuff showed that he could really work great if he gave a damn, because despite having no heat/no real experience, he's naturally super strong, good on his feet, and has some neat showings. Some highlights (bolded are particular matches where he shines best: for the sake of not going over old ground I'm not covering his really obvious highlights like the Kobashi/Akiyama matches) Tamon Honda vs. Hayato Mashita (Fortune Dream 1, 2014) Go Shiozaki & Tamon Honda vs. Mohammed Yone & Naomichi Marufuji (NOAH 14.04.2012) Go Shiozaki, Takuma Sano & Yoshihiro Takayama vs. KENTA, Kenta Kobashi & Tamon Honda (27.04.2008) KENTA, Mohammed Yone & Takeshi Morishima vs. Kenta Kobashi, Tamon Honda & Yoshinobu Kanemaru (17.02.2006) Kenta Kobashi & Tamon Honda vs. Minoru Suzuki & Naomichi Marufuji (17.05.2005) Akitoshi Saito, Jun Akiyama & Makoto Hashi vs. KENTA, Kenta Kobashi & Tamon Honda (23.06.2004) Akitoshi Saito, Jun Akiyama, Makoto Hashi & Yoshinobu Kanemaru vs. KENTA, Kenta Kobashi, Naomichi Marufuji & Tamon Honda (23.08.2003) Kenta Kobashi & Tamon Honda vs. Togi Makabe & Yoshihiro Takayama (16.07.2003) Akitoshi Saito & Jun Akiyama vs. Kenta Kobashi & Tamon Honda (06.06.2003) Akitoshi Saito, Jun Akiyama, Makoto Hashi & Yoshinobu Kanemaru vs. KENTA, Kenta Kobashi, Tamon Honda & Tsuyoshi Kikuchi (14.05.2003) Shinya Hashimoto & Tadao Yasuda vs Masao Inoue & Tamon Honda (ZERO-ONE Truth Century Creation II 18.04.2001) Naomichi Marufuji & Tamon Honda vs. Path Finder & Scorpio (24.06.2001) Daisuke Ikeda vs. Tamon Honda (29.03.2001) Masao Inoue & Tamon Honda vs. Mitsuharu Misawa & Yoshinari Ogawa (18.02.2001) Kentaro Shiga & Takeshi Morishima vs. Takashi Sugiura & Tamon Honda (08.01.2001) Masao Inoue & Tamon Honda vs. Mitsuharu Misawa & Yoshinari Ogawa (AJPW 27.11.1999) Hayabusa & Jinsei Shinzaki vs. Jun Izumida & Tamon Honda (16.01.1999) Tamon Honda & Toshiaki Kawada vs. The Lacrosse & Yoshihiro Takayama (25.07.1997) Mitsuharu Misawa vs. Tamon Honda (17.01.1997: me personally, I wouldn't put this here but it DID get a big reaction from the crowd, so.....) Tamon Honda vs. Toshiaki Kawada (12.01.1996) Johnny Ace, Ricky Santana & Steve Williams vs. Jun Akiyama, Kenta Kobashi & Tamon Honda (20.08.1994) Akira Taue & Tamon Honda vs. Jun Akiyama & Kenta Kobashi (03.06.1994) Stan Hansen vs Tamon Honda (AJPW 31.05.1994)

I feel like people are more on board with the concept of Morishima than the execution: the idea of a big Terry Gordy/Jumbo hybrid going around beating the shit out of whoever is in front of them while being a complete monster in the process sounds awesome, and for what it's worth, Morishima for most of his RoH run and his mid 2000's NOAH work is mostly very well done. He's a fun tag worker with Rikio and gets incredibly over with the NOAH crowd: people forget how loud they were for the guy when he's just running all over people: but gets incredibly cooled down by a shitty Misawa match where the poor man almost dies after a bad concussion and Morishima, the rampaging monster, is quietly put down by Misawa with a elbow to the face, sent to ROH for his historic title reign, and by the time he DOES eventually beat Misawa, the allure is long gone and he's just not the same anymore. Morishima has a pretty bad Achilles Heel: he can't really do long-form matches well, by that I mean anything beyond 20 minutes tends to lose steam unless it's something really special. He's just not that kind of worker in my opinion and it cripples him when he needs to do big GHC main event epics. He does get some solid enough matches later on but these are marred with a lot of half-assed performances, "health issues" (most likely underlining alcoholism) and Cho Kibou-Gun garbage where he's a near EVIL tier heel of consistent interference, ref knockouts, and other just general weak ways to get around actually having to wrestle. Even Nagata couldn't get much out of the lad at that point. His potential was huge, but there's way too many times where I've seen Morishima in action and he's just...bleh, doing all of his signature moves and nothing else, putting all of the baggage onto his opponent. Morishima bouts in the 2010's are dictated by how generous his opponent is basically. When he's on, he's fantastic, health issues be damned, but there's just way too much mediocrity to put him on a top 100.

Do I get him being here? Yes. Do I agree? Not really. I've watched a fair chunk of his stint in AJPW and while he most definitely has bright spots, he's not really got those "holy shit this dude is great" moments I got from Albright or Ace in their big matches. He's a reliable hand and certainly has had great matches (with great hands and one of the hottest babyfaces around in that era alongside him, mind you) but he's the weakest part of GET and doesn't really stand out in weekly TV showings, even in full matches where he's fighting tip top talent at the time and getting prime spots to show off. He has a pretty solid hot tag and knows how to play to the crowd incredibly well at the apron, nipping at the heels and getting all amped up whenever Kobashi starts to fight back: his offence in turn is also quite explosive at times and he's pretty reliable all in all, doesn't really botch or muck up anything. Ace by comparison has the same dynamic and has the benefit of numerous big tag matches with multiple different members: Patriot has GET and a super unremarkable run with George Hines as The Eagle in which they lost a lot. Maybe there's something I'm missing but from what I have watched, he's a good tag specialist but really nothing special in the wrong run unless surrounded by far bigger stars. It would take a lot for him to have a slot on the top 100.

I really don't agree with the idea that Ishii was or is "one note" or "just goes for strike exchanges and/or elbow shots" especially when you look at the stuff he's been putting out. He can be a comedic straight man tagging with complete goofs (or facing against them like his series with Yano) a underdog going up against bigger sized guns, a grumpy vet trying to put down stubborn new blood that won't quit, carrying undercard acts to bigger and better things, playing cat and mouse with bigger and tougher guys or having to claw through the antics of dirty heels. Yes, Ishii has (mostly) one way of wrestling these days: it's what got him to the dance in the first place: but the idea that he just goes into everything with the Shibata lens and goes gun-ho is just inaccurate in general. He's a very competent storyteller that just tends to focus on a single format to actually tell them.