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Finally doing my full due diligence on Buddy by just going through every bit of footage I can find for him. Starting off with his 77 and I think he might truly be the greatest physical actors in wrestling history. He's got a formula for sure when he's working lesser opponents, like Cocoa Samoa, where he works solely on action and reaction, but in a run of three matches from September 10 to October 1, he runs the gamut on everything. The first of two singles against Jay Youngblood is worked around the fact that Jonathan Boyd, noted Rose antagonist, is the special referee. These two milk every possible bit you could out of this and Buddy is getting constantly poked, prodded, and cheated against to the crowd's delight, while he throws giant animated tantrums. The rematch from two weeks later on September 24 is not much of a match but Rose's chance for revenge. He feigns a knee injury with pitch-perfect limping and hobbling around, which leads to Wisowski pinning Sandy Barr into the corner and allowing Buddy to gleefully destroy and bloody the arm of Youngblood, resulting in a stretcher job. Buddy is doing arm work here that is as vicious and maniacal as I've ever seen, bending the arm in a keylock AROUND the turnbuckle and then just repeatedly rowing Youngblood's shoulder and arm into the metal while flopping his hair and body around. This beatdown leads to Lonnie Mayne making the save and Buddy scampering away as fast as possible after getting a few licks taken on him. The Mayne singles from the next week is the masterclass cherry on top from Rose, who puts over the legitimate danger of being around Mayne better than anything else by being terrified to be in the ring in close proximity with him at all. After losing the first fall in like six seconds with his robe still on, Buddy gets ahead by Mayne simply overexerting before a fantastic cathartic beatdown third fall where Mayne is straight Popeye punching Rose with huge windups that he sells like Daffy Duck, whirling around and landing like a psycho wounded animal. Excited to explore more, but to me, he feels like one of the only people I've seen besides Funk that does so much with selling alone.

@ 1:11:12 there is a match between Austin/Rude and Sting/Pillman that is literally one of the greatest Austin performances I've ever seen - he is in full blown Buddy Rose insane stooging and cowering mode to avoid Pillman, complete with a great bit where he gets backhanded by Sting all the way to another corner, spots Pillman and leaps back towards Sting and has to roll out, before later on accidentally tagging Pillman, taking a punch right to the head that he bumps off the apron for onto his face, needing revival by Col. Parker via handkerchief waving. Just a masterclass.

Yeah, I'm with Elliott. Where are the recs? The write-ups sound immense.

I'd love someone to produce a little Red crash course. Always liked him but what are the ten or so matches that really state his case the best?

The staring match can kick rocks, respectfully.

There's a whole lot of discussion of overarching wrestling philosophies in this thread, but it's a little bit lighter on Cesaro match recs. Does anybody have an essential 15-20 matches to get a good idea of his case?

Sweet, I love Takayama

Gonna work through these over the next few days. I've always liked the idea of Fujita.

Don't really think Akebono will make my list either, but I do think he is really good at his specific thing and should be considered, if you're someone who likes the old-school giant gimmicks. He does that better than anyone I've seen since 2000.

I just finished Necro's 2006 as a part of my watchthrough of that year and while conventional wisdom has awarded Bryan Danielson the WOTY in 2006, I think Necro has just as good of a claim to that title as the American Dragon. Where Danielson makes his case is the sheer number of great matches he has that year, which is one of the virtues of being the top champion in the best promotion of the year. However, Necro exists at the margins and finds a way to make every moment as great as it possibly can be for the whole year. He's an awesome hobo babyface in IWA Mid-South and affiliates; the aforementioned European Rules match with Hero is a tremendous piece of wrestling TV in which the shoeless fella hangs tight with the supposed grapple wunderkind and gets his penance, the rematch with Joe (while lesser than the first match, but every match in wrestling history is, so that's fine) is another great stiff monster fight that transitions perfectly into the two matches with Low Ki (the Tap Out or Knock Out one from December being my personal favorite). He's a great monster in both the CZW/ROH feud and in CZW at large, providing great obstacles for the middling ROH guys like Whitmer and Pearce to overcome, but also a great hurdle for guys like Hero or Eddie Kingston to fight through in title defenses. He comes to the West Coast for the all-time sicko match with Super Dragon, but gets a genuinely great match out of Joey Ryan while he's there, carving up the pervert with a busted beer can from the trash to raucous applause. Port him over to the deathmatch world, and he's still got it! His run in Double Death with Toby Klein scratches the exact kind of itch you want from a big spotty American deathmatch, full of chaotic bumps and crazy weapon shots. The match against Chuey Martinez and Hugh Rogue sees Our Hero throw a dart into one of the poor guys' backs and it just sticks there and dangles in a perfect bit of disgusting chicanery. All of this is without mentioning his role in two of the best matches of the year and matches that I would consider perfect, in the Cage of Death and the big brawl with Homicide from 5/13. Without Zandig or Gage or some of those more established top guys from CZW's history, Necro really feels like the most dangerous man that ROH needs to overcome in that feud. He's a nasty punching machine who can't be killed, in a lot of respects, and without him being so dangerous, Homicide standing up to him wouldn't feel near as impactful into the end of the year with his giant push to the top of the mountain. If you are discounting the Necro Butcher because he's a "garbage wrestler" or you think he solely exists in the deathmatch space, you are missing out on the best brawler of the millennium. If I was able to find so many gems in 2006, almost all of which were outside of the deathmatch bubble, I can imagine that for the rest of his peak of 2002-2009ish, there are tons of gems floating around out there where he's an awesome puncher in regular matches. Truly a one of a kind wrestling talent.

Among the best sub-5 minute matches I've ever seen. So well-thought out for who both of these characters are; tons of fire from Kikuchi and Hansen lays a righteous beating on him. Take some time and watch this one, it's SO good!

Really enjoyed this. Kind of felt like a nice companion piece to the Funk match from Puerto Rico. Corino certainly isn't Funk, but there's something to be said about Barry as the super cool babyface who just gets to react to the big heel shtick.

Putski is a surprise through 77 and 80 so far for me. He's limited, but he's quite the little powerhouse and is super over with the big crowds. I think the camp of the VHS text "POLISH POWER" pulsing on the screen during his entrances does it for me a little bit too.

Can I get some Fujii recs? He's probably my favorite of the Toryumon guys I've seen.

This is a fantastic lil babyface performance from him. Will check out these other recs!