tactician

This is a guy who's reputation may be taking a hit based on the last few years, as a lot of people have expressed distaste with his matches as he's gotten older and physically broken down but to be frank, I feel even more conviction about his greatness now. With a rapidly failing body, while certainly not as consistent as his prime years, I still found Tetsuya Naito to be one of the more compelling wrestlers of the 2020s. His strength has always been his eye for psychology and deliberate match layouts so while the physical decline was visible, I still loved a lot of his work. Even in his athletic prime, his matches oftentimes would have sequences break down, botches would occur, he has never been the "cleanest" worker in the conventional sense but his matches tend to always convey a sense of struggle. He has also smartly adjusted by often making his aging and injuries a narrative hook in his matches. Just in recent memory, there is his double-shot vs. Will Ospreay and Kazuchika Okada back-to-back nights at the end of the 2023 G1 Climax which are both among the best matches I've seen in Japan this decade. His performance in Keiji Muto's retirement match helped make it every bit of the emotional, cathartic spectacle it needed to be. This guy was called "Stardust Genius" early in his career because he was considered among his peers to have a generational talent for structuring matches and when you survey the last 15 years of New Japan, it becomes clear that Naito is in command of largely all of his matches, even ones against top vets like Tanahashi and Okada. What stands out about him is the grit and edge that he often applies to his work. There is an overt viciousness to the way that he will apply offense like headdrops and neck-focused manuevers in a way you just don't see much in modern wrestling contexts. He's not afraid to bleed or get in hateful brawls, the Jericho matches stand out as a different feel from anything you'd see in the promotion at the time, feels genuinely raw and unhinged at times. As a babyface, he is an all-time sympathetic seller and as a heel, can stooge and make a babyface look incredible by throwing himself into key offense while demonstrating more than sufficient malice and cruelty in control. As far as I am concerned, he has produced genuinely notable and distinctly great matches at some point in his career against a laundry list of different opponents (some of whom are very flawed or limited workers): Okada, Omega, Ibushi, Tanahashi, Ishii, Shibata, Nakamura, Shingo, Zack Sabre Jr., Ospreay, Chris Jericho, AJ Styles, Juice Robinson, Taichi, Goto, Tenzan, Makabe, Muto, KENTA, Jeff Cobb, Lance Archer, EVIL, SANADA, YOSHI-HASHI, Mike Elgin, etc. and there is a clear variety to the scope of this work and the kind of stories told in these matches. He is a clear driver conceptually in all of them. He also works in a tag match in CMLL with Los Ingobernables that I find to be a certified classic and one of the most chaotic trios in Arena Mexico history. Motivates me to look deeper into his Mexican work and see if it can grow his case further. A total lock for my top 30 at this point, probably top 25 and potentially trending up after further investigation.

She's great and has one of the best powerhouse approaches I've seen of any modern wrestler. Doesn't pull any punches, more often than not leveraging her weight and grappling skill to oppressively control her matches to a riveting degree. Has a patient cadence to when she chooses to sell especially against an underdog. I just don't think she has the body of work for me to rate her on an all-time level and in many of her biggest spots, she defers to a generic 50/50 strike exchange-laden and robotic faux fighting spirit type of match that strips any substance away from her wrestling. It's such a bizarre contrast because when I enjoy her, her matches come across as incredibly cerebral.