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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!

8/1/1977- MSG Ken Patera vs Chief Jay Strongbow- FUN AWESOME match with a lot of heat and great stooging around from Patera, tons of potatoes, and a cool cockiness from Strongbow. It's not the greatest thing in the world, but the crowd is so hot and it pushes this past the line. Superstar Graham vs Bruno Sammartino- GREAT This is just perfect main event wrestling for this time period. Superstar took the belt off Bruno, Bruno has been waiting to get his revenge, they're barely able to hold back on each other during the introductions, and we have Gorilla Monsoon as the babyface enforcer referee this time. Mechanically, this is your standard Bruno/Graham match; lots of big meaty punches and donkey kicks and choking, but this crowd is with them for every step and there's a few big peaks that Monsoon is a huge part of. Superstar tries to introduce a rope and Monsoon smothers him, which allows Bruno to get the rope and choke Superstar with it, and the roof blows off the place. Superstar has enough of this shit and powders to take the countout, but Monsoon chases after him, ducking a wild hook from Superstar and carrying the champ back into the ring, tossing him at Bruno and letting him eat a donkey kick right in the sternum, and the MSG roof will never come back down to Earth. It's not as good as the June match for my money; that one is a bit grittier and more violent, even though both men bleed here, but this is some old-school maximalist WWWF brawling that works on every level. SWEET match.

Once I saw this was 1995, I tempered my expectations quite a bit and I thought this was at least a commendable performance from Tenryu, who's essentially working with a bloated mess of a man who wasn't really known for having a deep bag of tricks to begin with. Tenryu bleeds and really does a lot to make the weight of Yokozuna look deadly early on, with a splash and a leg drop. The interference is meh, and there's not as much fire from Tenryu as you would like to make it truly FUN, in every sense of the word, but it's a near-superhuman performance from Tenryu to make this even passable, and that's worth something in my book.

I'll throw Taue out as an older name. His 95 Carny run might be one of the best runs in a tournament in the history of the sport, and the Carny final against Misawa is one of the best All Japan matches ever. Similar to the others that have been mentioned, he's a guy who's style ported over really well to having tighter-paced, no-frills slugfests with shorter run times in that context.

6/11/1977- Championship Wrestling Ken Patera vs Billy White Wolf Too much powdering and not enough Patera potatoes and killer submissions. Boring. 6/27/1977- MSG Andre the Giant and Chief Jay Strongbow vs Nikolai Volkoff and Ken Patera- GREAT This was unadulterated Andre fun. Strongbow is cool as his little buzzsaw buddy, but Patera had gone on record as saying he would body slam Andre and he is having none of it. He's a big bucket of charisma as Patera and Volkoff stooge around and start turning on each other because no one wants to fight the big man. Strongbow keeps the fight going on the outside. It's just a giant blast of a time and ends in a smoz but it's great. Truly. Superstar Graham vs Bruno Sammartino- GREAT A far better outing than their previous one, this one lets Bruno play the vengeful crowbar he is best at portraying and Superstar gets to stooge around for him a lot more. As a result, it's a lot more personality-driven and big, letting the crowd eat out of their hands before the big finish. It's gritty and dirty and built on very simple concepts that pay off. Check out Superstar's big twirly punches and Bruno's full weight diving kicks onto the muscleman's chest. A sweet match.

Little bit of a lesser set tonight, but hey, it is what it is. 5/7/1977- WWWF TV Bob Backlund vs Jan Nelson Decent enough squash, would've liked a bit more Backlund but he had a cool butterfly suplex that was really over. Superstar Graham vs Mike Madera GREAT opening shtick where Grand Wizard rubs oil on the arms of Superstar. Match itself is not much, lots of stomps. Superstar Graham vs Ted Adams Essentially the same as the previous squash, except that Ted is a white guy. 5/14/1977- Championship Wrestling Ken Patera vs Don Serrano Patera is SO much better than Superstar, even in these four minute nothing matches. Serrano surprises him early with a flash kick and Patera stooges around before spazzing and breaking the little guy. Borderline fun territory. 5/16/1977- MSG Bruno Sammartino vs George Steele This was crazy boring from the relatively void of charisma Steele and finally got going with a great finish where Bruno is stomping the hell out of his head and leaves him bloody and passed out for a stoppage. Bruno is a man on a mission to get his title back! Superstar Graham vs Gorilla Monsoon At about half the length, this would've been really great. Gorilla is a brick wall early and is bruising Superstar's ego by beating him at these rudimentary strength exercises. It's a pretty standard muscleman vs fat guy match after the great opening charge, and it brings me back with a nasty stomp kind of thing from the top from Superstar. It lags quite a bit in the middle though, even though Gorilla is insanely over.

The more Taue I watch, the more I fall in love. Taue is a great character psychologically. He's always had a sort of inferiority complex, and I think that contributes to why I love him so damn much. He's never fully confident in his own abilities as a wrestler and he's always afraid to take the steps to get out of the shadow of someone else. When you think about him starting off in Super Generation Army, he's always third fiddle behind Misawa and Kawada, which prompts the move over to Jumbo's side. Once on Jumbo's side, he desperately wants to impress Jumbo and it makes for some really awesome "rookie" tags with him and Jumbo against all kinds of opponents where Taue essentially tries to take on both the competitors on his own to prove his salt to his new boss. Jumbo has always looked at him in a slightly disdainful but appreciative way, as a result, kind of like a screw-up kid brother who can't get his act together. Him and Kawada share this mentality a lot in their respective relationships, which makes their matches so intense and their rivalry so great. A lot of praise gets heaped on the '91 bloody sprint, which completely rules, but their '95 Carny match might be an even better representation of the personal struggles these two have gone through as tag partners. It's these two, deeply insecure and often overlooked warriors trying so hard to show everyone in the building that they are NOT the second fiddle in this relationship, like they have been forever in the rest of their lives. The '95 Misawa match, with the greatest orbital bone work to ever grace video, is predicated on this self-doubt from Taue, even after proving to the whole world that he's a force in his own right. The whole crowd LOVES him on that night until he starts to take liberties with the injured eye, even though he absolutely could've beaten Misawa clean in a scientific match. He just doesn't believe that he can. Beyond the actual in-ring psychology all of this produces, it subconsciously informs Taue's own match structure in a way that's so perfectly suited to what I want to watch. In the land of 90s AJPW, where the finishing stretches labor on and the mat work is often meandering and meaningless and every single person feels like they need to go 30+ minutes, Taue doesn't think anyone would want to see him for that long and so his matches turn into these beautifully crafted sub-20 minute fights, grounded in an amazing sense of real struggle and strategy. He's one of the only workers I've ever seen that recognizes "Hey, if my finisher is my best weapon and it ends matches, I should probably try to hit it as soon as possible, right?" He's constantly looking for the Nodawa Otoshi, and its seemingly endless variations he has for it, because that's his kill shot! He's also got one of the craziest looking topes of all time, just hurling his gangly body through the ropes at full speed towards his opponents. Check him out in any of his matches against Akiyama (the other most grounded AJPW worker) to see them put on a jam-packed, entertaining and DRAMATIC bombfest-style match in like ten to twelve minutes. He has a Triple Crown match against Vader in March of 1999 that maybe goes 14 minutes, and it's PERFECT. All of this informs his all-time great veteran babyface run, too, which helps his case for surpassing the other Pillars. He ages into someone who finally grows sure enough of himself to hate getting pushed around and snaps in awesome blow-ups, against the likes of Shibata and KENTA, or Marufuji, or even other peers of his. And the crowd loves to see it! When he fires up on Shibata, for example, it's one of the loudest reactions in Japan I've ever heard, as the place comes unglued for Taue, paintbrushing chops across the body of the much younger and cockier men. For everyone that says he's overlooked, or underappreciated, or underrated, or even (dare I utter) the WORST of the Four Pillars, I urge you to recognize the intentionality of that position. He's overlooked, by design. And he rocks that position better than any of the others rock their position. Taue will be in my top 15, at least. He's a miracle.

Don't think I'll be a voter on him, or he will even be a guy I look into, mainly just out of a lack of interest overall in his style, but in watching through 2006, I stumbled upon the Takashi Sasaki match mentioned earlier in this thread, along with a tag where he and Sekimoto take on a couple other deathmatch guys, and I have to say, I find him incredibly endearing. He's got a special connection with the Big Japan crowd in those matches where they are eating up everything that he does, and it feels really heart-warming for a guy who's only there to spill blood and eat light tubes. The best wrestlers are those who portray emotion really well and while Abby Jr's style doesn't allow him the most time to shine in terms of selling or anything, he's a very captivating and lovable babyface whenever he's on screen, in my experience with him.

Best session of the bunch so far! 3/7/1977- WWWF in MSG Bruno Sammartino vs Ken Patera- EPIC Holy cow, this was unbelievable. Bruno knows exactly what kind of a scumbag Patera is this time around and takes a lot of liberties, all prompted by the guest referee, the incomparable Gorilla Monsoon. Bruno is like the world's greatest and burliest mob crowbar here, just kicking Patera right in the gut over and over again, or mauling him with some of the best right hands I've ever seen. Patera never really gets solid footing here, opening things up with a punch to his jaw, doing his best Trevor Berbick against Tyson and stumbling all over himself, unable to regain his balance. He gets a few big bodyslams and poses to the crowd, who wants to see him legitimately decapitated, but the rest of this match is him trying to keep control and Bruno always keeping him off balance with awesome donkey kicks from the ground. Things get nasty towards the end and it culminates with one of my favorite finishes I've ever seen. Bruno finally has had enough and starts pursuing Patera more aggressively, bashing his head off of the turnbuckle, Fujiwara-style. Patera busts open like a stuffed pig and starts trying to come back and tee off on Bruno, constantly getting thwarted but still wanting to go, so Monsoon keeps setting him up and letting Bruno cave his face in, until finally he can barely stand and Monsoon calls the match. All of that, on top of some great bearhug spots, and some all time fist pumper hope spots from Bruno, puts this in very rare company for me. This will be getting the full 5 stars from me. Could not recommend it any more. 3/28/1977- WWWF in MSG Bruno Sammartino vs Baron Von Raschke- GREAT Kind of a similar match to the Patera one, albeit not as epic feeling, but more of the Bruno that I LOVE to watch; where he's in a rock fight and gets to play a little dirty. The Baron jumps Our Hero early and slaps the claw on, leading to a big Bruno comeback to even the odds. A little post-commentary from him lets us know that he hates the fact that the Baron didn't want to wrestle him scientifically, but he had to do what he had to do. GOAT behavior. Raschke gets the claw onto Bruno's shoulder and it leads to an incredible finishing stretch where one of Bruno's arms is essentially out of commission, and he just has to hockey fight pummel the Baron with one arm until his leg gets stuck in the ropes trying to chase him and the dastardly European cracks Our Hero with a chair and causes a giant pull-apart brawl that empties the locker room out. One for the incredible consistency file. Dusty Rhodes vs Tor Kamata- FUN Honestly, an all-time level hoot. I think this is about four minutes, and it's all just Dusty charisma and dancing, and a few HUGE bionic elbows. Awesome match. 4/30/1977- WWWF at the Capital Centre in Landover, MD Bruno Sammartino vs Superstar Billy Graham- GREAT I think this just sneaks into GREAT territory, on the back of an incredibly entertaining test of strength and a really great smoz finish where Superstar gets some juice and sneaks a win that is HEAVILY disputed, setting the very restless natives off in Landover. This is kind of a cross between the two Patera matches; a lot more selling from Bruno in the first half which I'm not super big on, but still a great comeback from one of the greatest to do that. What a company.

The more I've dug into Ishikawa, the more I have grown to love and appreciate what he brings, especially in BattlArts as the 90s-21st century Inoki that he always wanted to be. Mechanically, he's obviously among the very best ever. His mat work is cerebral and intricate, but never loses its sense of real harm and technique. His striking and brawling, while not as flashy as Ikeda's punches (among the best ever) or as reckless as a Takeshi Ono punt kick, he always knows when to uncork something big and change the complexion of a match. His selling is awesome, and you get the real sense from watching him that he's a grinder, a guy who knows what's happening is hurting but embraces the suck a little bit in the pursuit of getting better. Above all else, though, it's his personality that really shone through. Typically, I find myself siding more with Ikeda-types; snarly, menacing, heelish workers who love to harass and smack people around. Ishikawa broke that mold for me. I love his wryness and dry smirks in matches that almost show a bliss that he's even able to perform, or a pride in the company that he is built and how talented the other wrestlers are. He's even more endearing as an elder statesman, really getting to play patriarch over the empire he has built and pour into new adopters, like Thatcher, WALTER or Sawa. He just flat out rocks, and he really has come to represent a lot of what I look for in a great babyface; great connection to the audience and a never-say-die attitude that actually manifests itself in matches. The aforementioned Murakami match from 2000 is one of the greatest main events I've ever seen, as the entire arena is deadset on Their Hero conquering this snarly dickhead monster. The place comes unglued like the Coliseum for Yuki's teases of hope spots. It's magic. He then teams up with Murakami against Ikeda and Daisuke Sekimoto in 2007 in a whirlwind blast of a tag match, where Ishikawa experiments and tries to get a little nastier, grinning at the people almost like somebody who's never done something before trying it and being so proud of it. It's like watching somebody teach their wife how to throw a football and then seeing their face when she uncorks a perfect spiral after a few minutes of practicing. It's great. This really manifests though, in one of his matches with Ikeda, from the final BattlArts show in 2011, which is as close to a retirement match as anything has ever felt without being a retirement match. Yuki gets to step through the ropes of his own promotion one last time and Ikeda dials up an even nastier than normal heel performance to let The God cook in front of his people one last time. He'll be in my top 20. Maybe even my top 10. He's unbelievably perfect.

After much deliberation with one of my senpais in this space @elliott, I have decided to back up my watchthrough to 1977. 1/17/1977- WWWF in MSG Pat Patterson vs Baron Mikel Sicicluna- FUN Patterson's MSG debut and the seeds are already being planted for what I enjoy about his matches. He's kind of like someone's dad that found out something happened to his wife or his car or something, just a guy who looks 40 and throws a great punch and isn't afraid to play dirty with a detestable heel. He fires off some big shots here and the Baron is a simple enough heel to understand, stooging around and trying to get an object into play but getting foiled and pushed around. Easy breezy stuff. Ken Patera vs Bruno Sammartino- GREAT (marginally) The battle of the bearhugs! Patera looks sweet as ever and is super vocal throughout here, both taunting Bruno and taunting the crowd at Bruno's deficiencies. It's another cool power matchup for Patera, this time pitting powerlifting versus hard labor factory worker strength. I love Bruno's struggles for leverage here, trying to get his shoulders up under Patera to try and lift him. It's obviously a sweet big fella match and it's right in the pocket of what I've loved about the WWF so far at this time. The little details in the brawling add so much texture that feels so much more authentic. I love the giant stomps onto each others' heads, or the elbows that Patera drops on Bruno at awkward angles, or the sloppier bumps that feel like there's something actually wrong with these two. It's a gritty brawl in front of gritty people; textbook, old-school WWF. The Executioners vs Chief Jay Strongbow and Billy White Wolf This was 2/3 falls and was not good, pretty much at all. It took the grittiness and sloppiness a touch too far over the line and ended up just looking pretty bad. Sad for my fellow Oklahomans. Bruiser Brody vs Ivan Putski- FUN Real guilty pleasure kind of match, all thanks to POLISH POWER, which flashes on the screen in VHS font several times here. Putski is surprisingly charismatic here, dumping Brody out early and doing his best Eddie Guerrero shimmy. Brody isn't offensively bad here, but doesn't do enough of anything to impress or even make me feel anything other than apathetic. Stan Stasiak vs Bobo Brazil Stan's a lump and Bobo throws cool abdomen shots. Goes like four minutes. Eh.