EnviousStupid

She's making my list. One of the most adorable personalities in pro wrestling that always shines through across the vast majority of her work, alongside the ridiculous looking bumps she'll take. No idea how she hasn't needed to slow down or take a step back yet in terms of how physical her matches get.

I am quite content with just commenting that points made in this thread today are really dumb. Not an Adam Priest voter either but go off Mr. Clown

This is the dumbest discourse I've seen on any wrestler nominated here.

Terry Funk Yoshiaki Fujiwara El Hijo del Santo Jumbo Tsuruta Genichiro Tenryu Rey Mysterio Kenta Kobashi Ric Flair Bryan Danielson Jun Akiyama Others who might break in are Hiroshi Tanahashi, AJ Styles, Shinya Hashimoto, Bull Nakano, CM Punk, Nick Bockwinkel, Sangre Chicana and Antonio Inoki.

His last 5 years have been quite good, even with a couple periods of him seemingly miscast. I'd give him till the next decade before considering him seriously for the project though.

Easily ranks among the best wrestlers in the world since the turn of the century. What he lacks in the "strong style" department he more than makes up for in his selling, character work, match layout, charisma, and various other intangibles across a very substantial body of work. Go Ace!

We've seen Benoit have great work in short matches, long matches, house show matches, TV matches, PPV matches, le epic finisher kickout matches, all regardless of whether he was taking the lead or acting as the dance partner. He'd be fine.

Seconding the Sheik/Goulet v Dick/Thomas tag, it's incredible.

Incredible in terms of fuelling excitement for future matchups. Would love to see Rikio/Ogawa and Misawa/Murakami singles matches, even when the former doesn't sound appealing on paper at all. Anyways, Rikio here gets chants for how he just tanks what the shooters are throwing at him. Really great in being this huge body throwing himself at people with little regard for anyone's safety. Misawa has a legendary kind of status at this point (& event) but comes across shrewd in how he'll engage the match. The first bit of action from him is a pair of cheap elbows to get Ogawa off of his partner, and from then on, we get more grappling and amateur wrestling from him than any of the signature hits. Him teasing a judo throw on the world-champ judoka had me rewinding the video just to make sure I was certain of what I saw. Murakami is awesome too. Looks like Low-Ki and acts like a pitbull scrapping with far larger dogs. A relatively short match that never felt rushed for time.

Personally I wouldn't have this above the Misawa memorial match, though I'd call it a much more impressive affair given it was a) a singles match, and b) against Sayama in 2010, as opposed to Jun Akiyama and KENTA while still in their respective primes. One could argue KENTA was the one primarily bringing such a fiery performance out of Kawada that we hadn't seen in a long time from him. Not to understate the significance behind WHY the match was even happening but watch KENTA slap and kick the shit out of him early on. It's a very reliable way for him to stir shit in a heavyweight.

Fuck Kawada. Tenryu's one of the best of the 80s, arguably better than Kawada (and co.) across the 90s, and still delivered plenty of great, memorable work throughout the 2000s. He lasted longer, was great for longer, had classics with more opponents, found success in far more places, and even when past his prime I recall thinking his offense and selling was a lot better than Kawada's whole kick, knee and knocked-out shtick ever was.

My gut tells me 2009, but 2002 sees him working in WWE in the second half of that year and the entire time he's making a very strong argument for being the best wrestler in the world.

If he never has another match again, ending his career on giving Kyle Fletcher the biggest rub in a MOTYC is quite remarkable.

There's a saying that a light which burns twice as bright burns half as long, and I think it can apply to certain wrestlers who never recapture that lightning in their body of work. As it pertains to Foley, while he definitely suffered a physical decline quicker than most, I think he might've been one of the best at maintaining that intangible fire when it counted. He has arguably Orton's career match in 04, Edge's in 06, great matches with Flair in both WWE and TNA.

I don't see it. He's definitely a good wrestler and impressed me when I saw him live a couple years ago, but the peaks are where I struggle to compare him with anyone else I'm expecting to be in contention on my list.