ohtani's jacket

Man, if only shodate had voted. Maybe he did.

While it's true that Ikeda was disappointing in NOAH, it's just NOAH.

Volk Han was one of the ultimate pro-wrestling showmen. I can't remember which Yamamoto match it is, but the finish is one of the all-time great pro-wrestling finishes. The kind of finish that makes you wan t to go out and run a marathon. Something like Tamura/Kohsaka, on the other hand, is much more heady.

I appreciate all that, but sometimes you want a little more. I'd say the same thing about other wrestlers too such as Onita. It's the flipside of the argument that Misawa is a great wrestler who doesn't show any emotion. Choshu shows a huge amount of emotion but doesn't wrestle enough. I know you've watched an ungodly amount of Choshu in recent times, but I have it seared into my brain that Choshu vs. Hashimoto was good whereas Choshu and Jumbo going broadway was tough going.

BattlARTS was some of the best wrestling of the late 90s. It was basically a hybrid juniors style and extremely different from the pure RINGS style. RINGS will always be more beautiful to me, but BattlARTS was interesting in the same way that Casas and Wagner cribbing shoot style holds was interesting. The '98 and '99 Ishikawa/Ikeda matches are some of my favorite matches ever. Given you loved ARSION, it's odd that you never gave BattlARTS much of a chance.

The AEW effect was overstated, and no doubt a kneejerk reaction to the territory guys dropping, but that's part of what makes the reveal fun. This is a reaction thread. The deeper analysis can be done later. If we're talking about someone like Tanahashi, then yes there was a resistance from some quarters to place him highly in 2016, but New Japan was still in the mid of its mid-10s peak. It won't surprise me if Okada and Tanahashi do extremely well this time due to the time that's elapsed. If they don't, then it will be interesting to ponder the reasons.

Ishikawa was positioned as the top wrestler in BattlARTS, so that may have something to do with it. He was an Inoki worshipper, so there's an element of self-aggrandizing in the way he carries himself character-wise. Ikeda always came across as Ishikawa's dance partner in BattlARTS. It wasn't until I saw Ikeda in Futen that I thought he came into his own. That was often the case in shoot style where guys had to get out from other people's shadow. With Choshu, I think how much you rate him depends on how you value the cultural impact he had on Japanese wrestling. People overuse the term "influence" a lot, but Choshu is easily one of the most influential Japanese wrestlers of all-time. More so than Jumbo or Tenryu. If you're looking from it strictly from an in-ring perspective, he's good, but great? I dunno. I've come to appreciate strong style a lot more over the years, but mechanically speaking, Choshu has his limitations.

We were asked when we started watching wrestling. The number of people who began watching in the 70s and 80s was extremely small, as were the number of people who participated in the 2006 and 2016 polls. There may be a handful of people who discovered wrestling later in life, but I think it's safe to say that it was a younger demographic that voted. Are they influenced by outdated opinions? Perhaps to some degree, but you can't expect the entire foundation to crumble just because you've decided to nail your flag to modern guys' mast. The results have been surprising so far in that they haven't swung one way or the other. That suggests, to me anyway, that instead of staid opinions dominating the list, there's a mixture of all sorts of exploration going on.

I'm pretty sure every person who voted for Regal can point to a match they thought was great. The number of older voters who hated 00s Japanese and indie wrestling is miniscule. The number of old voters in general was miniscule. I don't this holds much water in this year's vote.

I wouldn't put Regal in my top 10 European workers, but he's always going to win the popular vote. I've only watched bits and pieces of KENTA's mid-00s work. I can see why he was popular the time. Neither guy strikes me as particularly divisive.

I didn't vote for Takayama, but he fits the bill for that aura farming thing. Baba still has people's respect. I can't remember who finished higher last time, Inoki or Baba. You'd have to think it was Baba. I thought the Osprey kid would do better.

Probably, but to be fair, his nomination post is mostly filled with posts from a decade ago.

He wasn't the best at any of the other dimensions the dude mentioned either.

This was very good. I especially liked the early part where Lashley busted out the matwork. I got a chuckle out of Lawler claiming that Cena had never wrestled anyone with Lashley's amateur credentials. Mind you, I could also see folks claiming Lashley's matwork was better than anything Angle did with Cena. I thought they did a great job of laying out the match so that both babyfaces got heat instead of having one of them play a tweener role. Didn't love the finish. I didn't realize it was a super Attitude Adjustment. It looked like Cena body slammed him to the mat and pinned him. Even if it was a new move, it didn't feel like the right beat to end it on. The match seemed to end too quickly, but I guess that's a sign of how much I was enjoying it.

This was fun. It was wrestled on Danielson's terms until Necro was bloodied from some nasty headbutts Then it turned into a brawl, which seemed to piss Danielson off. I liked how annoyed he got at Butcher during the bout. I thought they were gonna do Necro dirty, but he survived cattle mutilation and put up a fight before getting beaten into submission. Too short to be a classic but worth watching.

Dunno about that Jay Briscoe ranking. Time will tell whether this indie guys stay in the top 100 or not. Jaguar has a strong case for being top 50. Eaton did extremely well. Lesnar is overrated as fuck.

Suzuki is better on paper than in the ring. Great highs, though. Sabu and Kevin Owens are hard to care about . I've been watching Owens and Generico vs. the Briscoes the past few days, and all I can think about when I see Owens is James Corden.

I don't understand why we haven't heard more about this guy if he's such a great worker. I'm out of touch with anything that happened in the past 20 years, but you still hear the buzz around guys. Again, I really liked him when watching his early ROH stuff. Just didn't expect to see him in the top 100. Maybe he really is that good. I dunno.

Did Low Ki fall out of the top 100 or did I miss him somehow?

I thought you needed to be cool to have aura.

I'm not sure if Dustin's output matches the respect and admiration people have for him, but I wouldn't call him underserving. All I'll say about Benoit is that a lot of people voted for him. I guess they had their reasons.

People keep on making the case for Strong that he was a good worker. He's right there next to a great worker in Dandy. So either it's a case of Who are you to doubt, Roddy Strong? or he's not top 100. Not sure how Morton survived being culled. People watching Rock 'n' Roll Express matches in 2025 vs. territories guys dropping like flies doesn't compute. I thought Naito would finish higher. I guess he needs to go to AEW.

This did nothing to subdue my hatred for ladder matches. Their street fight was superior in every single way.

Dandy feels a tad lucky to make the top 100 despite appearing on a large number of ballots. I dunno if we'll ever be as high on him as we were in '06. He could do with a footage drop. I've only see Strong's work from the mid-00s, so I can't really comment. I've liked what I've seen, but honestly, I didn't know he was still around. Is Bruno one of the success stories from this year's list? Definitely sensing an upswing in his rep.

Actually, LA Park is a good comp for Ozaki. The only difference is that Park had high end brawls post-prime whereas Ozaki fell off sharply in terms of match quality.