elliott

These two finished within 12 spots of each other last time with an average vote 50 & 57. So they were pretty close last time around. What do you think?

I think this is a great comp. I went with Savage because I think he's more versatile. Savage has the ability to come across like the most dangerous person in the building, but he can also pull off bumping stooging heel really well. Choshu is amazing at being Riki Choshu, but I think Savage's more fluid character lends itself to more variety within the matches of his peak run. Choshu is pretty much always Choshu (which is a good & awesome thing hahaha). Another thing, I think I'd trust Savage more in a 20+ minute singles match where I think an ideal Choshu singles match needs to be around 15minutes. However, Savage has way more booking tools and leeway with what he can do in his matches that go 20+ minutes than Choshu would have just based on the style. I do think they're both probably at their best working 10-18 minute matches. Choshu smokes Savage as a tag wrestler. I love Savage in tag matches. He's an AWESOME apron worker. But Choshu...Choshu's one of the great tag workers of his generation in my opinion. But its really Savage's variety that pushes him ahead. If we were just doing "favorites" these two are absolutely up there for me.

That was what I had in mind when I was pushing Grimmas to make a subforum for these comparison threads. I don't really have anything to say about Jerry Lawler or Yoshiaki Fujiwara individually. But Jerry Lawler vs Yoshiaki Fujiwara is something I have to think about because I see them both as top 5 candidates.

People haven't even watched Dump's prime. Bringing up her 2003 is intentionally derailing the thread before its even begun. Notjaytabb literally just said they've discovered her TODAY after 30 years as a fan and someone's first instinct is to distract and bring up a period 15 years later literally no one has ever pointed to as worth watching? What exactly is the point of that? But my apologies because I've inadvertently done the same as far as derailing the thread. My post wasn't about the argument but about the consistent pattern of a poster repeatedly doing this in woman's thread after woman's thread. I should've just ignored the poster from the start and will do so now.

Dude, we're just trying to get people to watch her actual prime. Real question, are going to continue to act like this in every women's wrestler thread? In the past week there have been posts bumping threads about Daniel Bryan, Negro Casas, Buddy Rose, Satanico, Lou Thesz, CM Punk, Shinya Hashimoto, and Konnan. You have absolutely nothing to say about any of them but you're rushing in to "Dare" people to watch post prime Dump?

Not a single person has or would put Dump forward as a longevity or post peak candidate. Her case is made in the 80s.

Not a single person has or would put Dump forward as a longevity or post peak candidate. Her case is made in the 80s.

Watch Party just ended. #2 feels good.

I've really begun dipping my toes into 2010s Joshi lately and I've only seen 3 of her matches but Nakajima has stood out in a big way. I'm really looking forward to checking out more. Thanks to @donsem43 and @Reel for bringing the recommendations!

I had 2 Jumbo matches and one Hashimoto match on my last top 100 so for me its close. But I also had more Andy Kaufman matches on my list than Jumbo & Hash matches combined, so I'm not arguing on behalf of the consensus.

If the Victor Zangiev match happened in 2003 instead of 1989 it'd be a MOTYC I'm also a huge fan of the Ogawa singles matches. I dunno about MOTYC level, but Hash really excels in that sort of setting. Between the early Ogawa matches, the Zangiev match, that Ramzin Shbiev special fight, the famous 4 way Schneider was at back in the day with Corino, Hashimoto really overdelivers against zero experienced or limited experienced wrestlers in a way I can't think anyone else ever has. (Maybe Fujiwara? edit. Duh Lawler)

My favorites are vs Chono 8/91 vs Tenryu 2/94 vs Hase 11/94 vs Muto 8/95 vs Takada 4/96 vs Choshu 8/96 vs Fujinami 6/98 vs Tenryu 8/98 w/ Iizuka vs Ogawa & Murakami 1/00 There are NJPW/WAR multi man matches that would fit the bill but I'm doing this off the top of my head and am fuzzier on the dates with those.

I kind of anticipated Hashimoto winning or at least it being pretty close. I think as time passes the esteem for Hashimoto is really growing and its kind of fading for Jumbo. They're sort of similar candidates on the surface: Top Tier Aces, great really early and then stayed great only dropping off with health/death. ~ 20 year run as really relevant performers. I'd push back on Hashimoto lacking MOTYC and especially having an extra gear. If we did a big match list of doom for both guys I suspect it would be pretty close. I went with Hashimoto because I really like Hashimoto the performer for his entire career. I will rush to watch a new Hashimoto match from any year against any opponent. There's some new Hashimoto discovery against a no name karate fighter who has never had a match before? I'm fucking in on that! With Jumbo, he has large sections of his career that are more opponent dependent. Like most of us, I'm a huge fan of 86-92 Jumbo. That wrestler is fucking incredible and I'll watch him in any setting against anybody. 72-85 Jumbo I'm not just blindly going to watch the match, I have questions first. This isn't to suggest he's just some shlub who needed to be carried. He was a great young wrestler and then a great wrestler from that time period. I'm just much less enamored with him in that stretch because of how he worked. If I looked and found a newly discovered Jumbo vs Bobby Heenan 15 minute match, I would drop everything and watch it. If it was Jumbo vs Bob Roop, I'm going to find another match. There are some wrestlers that I just want to watch every single available match they're in. People like Terry Funk, Akira Hokuto, Andre, Devil Masami, El Hijo del Santo, Otsuka, Satanico. Hashimoto is in that group. I'll watch him in any setting against any opponent no matter who/when/where/how long. Jumbo's just not in that group as much as I love 86-92. With things between them being relatively equal if we did any sort of breakdown of traits or their candidacies, that "No questions asked' factor pushes Hashimoto over the top.

Two of the best Aces ever. Which one will you rank higher???

Totally agree. Wonderful stuff @GOTNW

Ignore Volk Han because he's sort of his own unique beast. But comparing Tamura to his other contemporaries, he's an absolute athletic marvel. Over the years when you see threads pop up "Who is the best athlete in wrestling" my first thought is always Kiyoshi Tamura. Now you might say being a great athlete isn't important to being a great wrestler, but when you're a shoot style worker, its important to be a great athlete because the goal of shoot style was to look more like a sport. It also means his movements are smoother, his counters are faster, his lunges to the ropes for rope breaks are faster, his strikes are quicker and thrown with more precision. He has better stamina which means for less resting and rope breaks and more organic grappling and counters. How many other people could have pulled off that first 10minutes of Tamura vs Kohaska where they're just going hard at each other on the mat exchaning holds and never going for rope breaks? In addition to his otherwordly athleticism, I think it comes across that Tamura is a fucking workhorse. He's never sleepwalking through matches out there, hes always busting his ass so you'll get something worthwhile just about every time and he never really has the "lay around in a leg lock for 3 straight minutes" issue that is more likely to crop up in a Takada or Maeda match. So you've got a situation where the most athletic and technically proficient performer is also the hardest worker. Sort of a Michael Jordan situation. He also has quite a large amount of great matches over a decade plus against a variety of opponents. Without looking at the Tamura thread I did, I can think of great matches against Volk Han, Kohsaka, Yoshihisa Yamamoto, Yoji Anjoh, Masahito Kakihara, Hiroyuki Ito, Josh Barnett, Dokonjonsuke Mishima, Vader, Nikolai Zouev, Andrei Kopilov, Kazuo Yamazaki, Nobuhako Takada, Gary Albright, Mikhail Ilioukhine, and I'm sure there are others I'm forgetting because I almost forgot about Ilioukhine and that's one of Tamura's best matches. I really like Kazuo Yamazaki for example, and I will have a place for him on my list but I couldn't point to legitimately great Yamazaki matches against that many opponents. Shoot style is such a limited style as far as what you can do and the goals so simply having the most polished technique, being the fastest striker, the best athlete and the hardest worker are enough to put you at the time. Tamura is also super charismatic in his way, has an interesting career arc while working at a consistently high level from an early age. He was an incredible seller and understood how to build exciting and dramatic matches even within his narrow style.

I went with Tamura. Casas is a guy who I totally understand as a #1 contender and he's someone that I think is clearly one of the all time great wrestlers, but there's just somethign missing for me. I've never been able to figure it out. He's never connected with me like when I watch other people Ithink are all time greats. Its sort of like that DylanWaco-Jumbo Tsuruta thing, but I don't like actively dislike Casas. Its something I can't really explain. So anyway I went with Tamura because I feel the complete opposite about him. There are very few people I've enjoyed watching wrestle more than Kiyoshi Tamura.

@Microstatistics made me think of this earlier when they said Han was a top 10 contender. Other than the general fun of watching & talking about wrestling with all of you, to me the most fun aspect of this project comes in the actual comparing of wrestlers. There a lot of easy ones. I don't have to think hard to know that I think Shinya Hashimoto is better than Keiji Muto. I have to think harder about Nick Bockwinkel vs Buddy Rose, but ultimately I can reach a conclusion fairly easily. But over the course of this project at some point you're forced to compare radically different wrestlers. It might be a modern wrestler with their entire career on tape vs someone from WoS. It might be a short but amazing peak vs someone with crazy longevity who wasn't that good. Or it might just be Volk Han vs Ric Flair. I ended up voting for Volk. I think we probably know the cases of these two wrestlers pretty well and I won't spend much time there. Flair is obviously Flair. I'll say a little more about Volk because he's still a little obscure to some of the folks here. At its simplest, Volk was awesome from his very first match and was awesome until the very end. He didn't have many matches (~60), but we have every single one of them. We can see him against fellow masters, we can see him against good wrestlers, we can see him against bad wrestlers, we can see him in intense matches with high stakes or virtual exhibitions. We can see him against big powerhouses or smaller speedsters. Within his narrow style, we have the opportunity to see Han against a decent variety of types of opponents and he delivers against everyone. I'm not going to say every match is a classic, but I will say every match is at worst interesting because of Han's work. There is no down period where he's good but hasn't figured it out yet or is still good but has clearly lost a step. Volk was genuinely always great. We talked during the last project about all styles not being equal and I firmly believe that. Just because someone is the "best indy death match wrestler" that doesn't mean they're a candidate for the top tier strictly because they're the "Best of their style." Some styles are better/more difficult/more impressive than others. I have a real reverence for the best of the shoot style wrestlers: Han, Tamura & Fujiwara. I consider them all top 10 candidates and I anticipate making space for them all. Someone like Tsuyoshi Kohsaka who had an even shorter career still has a place reserved on my list because he briefly hit this upper echelon. I think shoot style when it is worked at its highest level is the most difficult style of wrestling to master and those that did it represent the absolute elite tier of in ring pro-wrestlers. I think it takes an entirely different level of skill to build dramatic and exciting matches in RINGS than when you have all the tools available to a traditional pro-wrestler. I know the big argument against Volk would be lack of matches. I understand that, but I disagree with it. Sure it would be great if there was 1000 Volk Han matches. But if there were, we probably woudln't be able to see literally all of them. With Ric the big argument is that he had a long stretch of being terrible and thats a bigger issue for me than someone having too few matches.

This is the early favorite for most surprising revelation of the 2026 project.

*Shrug* Elsewhere you mentioned Thesz as someone you were considering for the top 10. Considering this whole project is about ranking and making cases for wrestlers, you have a big voice, have watched more of him than probably 99% of people, and theres not a lot written about Thesz in his thread, I would've thought you'd rather talk about one of your top 10 candidates ahead of someone you earlier said you were tired of sticking up for. But that's cool. I won't ask anymore.

Ric Flair had more matches in 3 months than Volk Han did in his career. Volk Han has the highest batting average of good/great matches of any ever. Who you got?

Absolutely agree re: Bock. That's the Mt Rushmore of US based workers for me.

I'll work on it after you tell us about Lou Thesz.

Nevermind

Nevermind