Clayton Jones

2/3 falls. The commentator really stresses the amount of action you'll see from these four men and he's not wrong. They were building to something great here but it devolves both in story and in execution as Cholak's team continues to break down. This culminates in a series of Moose charges that Cholak takes some absolutely psycho bumps on for a guy his size. The Kangaroos are great opponents for these two, charismatic, athletic, and a little dirty. This was really fun and Cholak in some ways gives a great performance and in some ways derails the match. Overall a good spectacle with plenty of action as advertised. Please correct me if this is not Capitol Wrestling, I'm assuming as much based on other footage from this era.

I thought Cholak's punches looked good as always, and the afformentined shoulder blocks. The finish was an impressive feat of strength and believable reversal to take a flash win. There wasn't much more to this other than Wright's strange offense. I'd love to see more matches between them, I thought this was fine

Great brawling to open and peppered throughout the match. Both guys know how to work a fist fight and make it look believable. Great punches and clubbing. Cholak is still his big bumping selling to the back row self but gives a reserved performance by his standards, maybe trying to get the importance of his title over. Brazil builds to minimal offense effectively and is a competent dance partner but not the most engaging. This turns into a battle of the Coco Butts, which is amusing to hear Cholak talk about in ernest in the post match interview. The build to the first two falls is very good as is the structure of the match in general.

That's fair. If I feel revisiting and discovering more of the Wild II stuff it's flashes of greatness but moreso unrealized potential he'll probably get cut. If I think that combined with the ROH run make for a compelling peak argument I could see him making his way on the tail end of my ballot. I'm pretty darn high on the ROH work but I'll go back through some of that as well to be sure.

Morishima will sniff my top 100, and he will sniff it vigorously. It looks like Soup and I coincidentally started watching his work last night which is some real GWE synchronicity. He recommended a 2001 match VS Akiyama which I will certainly check out, I strongly recommend his 2004 WLW title match VS Ikeda. I also watched a 2011 title shot he and Yoshie got VS Bernard/Anderson to get into some later stuff. It was an okayish match, I'm not motivated enough to make its own post, but it's worth noting Morishima brings the vast majority of the positives to the match as the resident top NOAH wrestler trying to win back the titles. I haven't generally had problems with his selling (the entire Danielson feud is a favorite of mine), my main criticisms of his work are of his tendencies to show what he can do instead of what he should do. He's definitely a peak argument but I think there's more connective tissue there than people might expect. In large part because he was a great tag wrestler. I wish the end of his career went differently for his sake especially and I'm not looking forward to getting into the last few years, but I'll make sure I at least hit on some.

I haven't watched this since when I first got this show in after it happened, and I was really biased against Rikio at the time. Takeshi II have some serious swag on their way in. Way better than I remembered, everyone looked great and had a distinct role to play. Rikio's good as the ass kicker of his team, Morishima the fiery youngster of the 4, Suzuki constantly stirring the pot, and Takayama the confident monster. They went out of their way to make the local boys look great and I could see some saying to the detriment of the match but Suzuki and Takayama look strong by the end. This was a very good heavyweight tag title match that didn't outstay its welcome and did exactly what it needed to do.

Get ready to watch him and Dick Togo trade a lot of face locks. I love TAKA and have him 98th on my rough draft but worry his career is too uneven to hold that spot given the names knocking at the backdoor. 90s MPro is among my favorite stuff ever though so no matter how many ROD matches I might have to go back and watch he may scrape and claw to keep his spot.

Man Morishima was an absolute beast in this. I've been meaning to watch this match forever, I might even own it on DVD and skipped it back when because Ikeda always seemed like he was collecting a paycheck in NOAH. This match is laid out in a clever way where he looks like he's not in Morishima's league most of the time but he actually comes out stronger for it by the end. The finish absolutely floored me. This match might be the best example ever not to judge something on paper until you've seen what they do in the ring. Great stuff.

Likely to be my highest deathmatch wrestler, and I think he's added to his resume nicely since 2016. I haven't seen the Masada match mentioned above but their 2012 FREEDOMS Pain In Limit finals is one of my favorite deathmatches of all-time and one of my favorite matches of the decade. I also don't see what's so bad about Masada but I'll hardly be making a case for him so that's irrelevant. Kasai's strength is very much in his versatility, ironically I think he's a significantly worse deathmatch wrestler than a lot of his peers over the years, but a great character who knows how to work around his limitations and to his opponents' strengths. And more so than any of his peers he's transcended the genre and through sheer grisly determination put together a great career. I'll gladly watch him wrestle Yuki Ueno or G-Raver or anyone in between and will usually be glad I did.

The Bock match from Hawaii in I think '79 is one of the best matches I've watched in the past few years. I've never been down on younger Jumbo, so take that for what you will, but it's far from a carry job, and a damn near perfect match by my standards.

As I'm almost done the launch podcast and this type of topic comes up a few times it's been on my mind too. My feeling is great wrestlers make great matches out of minimal opportunities at some point in their careers. Recognizing that this isn't a competition to see who has the most great matches is fair, but I struggle to name anyone who will compete for a spot on my ballot who doesn't have some great matches to their name. Maybe I'll find someone along the way though.

Sadly his career has come to an end but it sounds like once I dig deeper into his later work on the southern indies (I really like what I've seen previously) he's going to have a real shot at my ballot. The best heel I ever saw live. Is there anything he added since 2016 that I should keep my eyes out for?

I think the handheld Kobashi match is every bit as good as their other matches.

Most of what I've seen is 1999-2003 so I guess my high opinion makes sense. I also thought the one Misitico match I've seen was great but maybe if I saw more between them I'd be a little less high on UG in particular (although it wouldn't make me think less of the match). I've also seen a few of his more recent NJPW tags and thought they were good if flawed. Really on the border if I should fit him in as a candidate or not. I really love that Gdl VS Santo/Casas match from 2001.

She also got me into joshi again circa 2007 but I didn't have her down on my names to consider list for some reason. Granted I've only watched stuff from a year or two from what seems like the peak of her career but she's someone who can clearly generate a ton of interest and it sounds like there's much more I should dig into.

I'm high on Go, I think leaving for AJPW lit a fire under him that was much needed and he hasn't looked back since. Loved his team with Nakajima but love them as opponents even more. Their match last year was probably my MOTY.

High octane super fun times. Santo and Casas looked great here in totally different ways, Santo with his typically unbelievably smooth mid air transitions and gorgeous chaining offense, and Casas being the glue that holds the match structure together and keeps both teams looking strong. Niebla was really feeling himself. I think that spot from Tarzan Boy was an intentional rudo banana peel spot but either way it worked well especially with his role in the match. Agreed that finish held it back from being anything special but still loads of fun.

So what about Ultimo sucks so bad outside of his best matches? Because most of what I've seen over the years is very good to great but I've always gotten the sense from more knowledgeable lucha fans that he's like an Angle or HBK. Maybe looks good from the outside but below the surface the substance isn't there? Weird question to ask but can I have some examples of matches that'll help me get a better idea of his flaws? All I've really noticed is a bit of a tendency to excess.

Awesome, I will keep those in mind. I also forgot the Tanhashi NEVER match which I liked just about as much as the Cobb defense, and a tag in DGUSA I was live for w/Dragon Kid VS Speed Muscle that totally stole the show. It's not on display as much these days but Shingo's tag work is a big plus for me.

I'm glad to not have to be the first person to have to admit to enjoying that Richards match at the time. Literally the only Richards singles match I can remember liking other than his stuff VS Rave. Oh man, I need to start considering Rave...

I had given up on Dragon Gate by the Mochizuki match that keeps coming up, maybe I gave it a shot at some point and turned it off halfway through, that happened with that era for me a few times. So admittedly the mid 2010s are a gaping hole for me with Shingo, and I'll need to fill that in to figure out his placement. But for some recommendations that haven't been covered (some great stuff already mentioned in Case's 2015 post), I love... 1/15/2008 w/Hulk VS Speed Muscle, the main event VS Doi on I think the first DGUSA show, the 2010 hair match VS Hulk (I lied, Case mentioned this, but it's worth repeating), the PWG matches VS CIMA and VS Generico, then more recently the PWG tag w/Dragunov VS WALTER/Thatcher, the 2019 G1 match VS Goto (I liked this much better than a lot of highly praised stuff from that G1), the trilogy VS SHO, and the early 2020 NEVER match VS Ishii. Wait has the Cobb match not been mentioned? That's among my top matches this year. Shingo's style is his style though, he's an elite level bomb thrower, both in execution but also in his match structure. If that's generally not for you then there's only a handful of matches that might sway you. There are times when it misses with me completely still, like the Ospreay BOSJ finals.

What a fantastic match full of beautiful struggle and breath-taking action. Casas slaps on a scorpion deathlock faster than I thought humanly possible at one point. For my tastes this match had everything I could want out of a title match. Casas' shit eating grin after the low blow was such an amazing moment. This entire match was structured to make Ultimo look like a million bucks, and say what you want about him, he delivered.

Oh wow, ZSJ is very likely to be on my ballot, so maybe that makes sense for me being high on Gresham too. I agree I'd rank him lower but the Octopus has a shot for me so I'm glad to see I'm not on an island there.

The match from I think Final Battle where PCO wins the title was kind of a mess. More so PCO's fault but Rush looked out of his league to salvage it. Him and Dragon Lee had a great match against the Briscoes years back though and it felt like maybe it was part of a bigger feud.

I was by no means down on Nia at the time but that did feel like an absolute miracle match. I'm looking forward to going through Bayley's heel run when I get up to her as I've seen virtually none of it. Really appreciate those above recommendations.