MidasGloves

To be blunt, Bryan was always going to be a lock for Top 2 on my list. If you asked me my favorite wrestler of all-time any year since I started watching wrestling in my teens I would say "it's between Daniel Bryan/Bryan Danielson and [one out of Liger/Kobashi/Funk] but it's probably Bryan". My favorite match of all time is still him and Cena despite watching hundreds of bonafide classics since then. It's hard for me to even determine if what I look for in a pro wrestler is just what Danielson is, or if my criteria formed around how Danielson was the guy who made me fall in love with pro wrestling; I think he's a guy who can do anything he's tasked with and do something good with it. Him and Terry Funk are the only two pro wrestlers I could genuinely see being transplanted into any company in any era and being a highlight with no exceptions and that's why they're #1 & #2 (and trust me despite my biases which is which isn't set in stone yet). I'd trust him in bloody brawls, technical showpieces, comedic openers, tag matches, gimmick matches, sprints, long-hauls, anything. All that said, I get the criticisms. I think he's taken on so many influences that it can be hard to form what a signature prototypical Bryan Danielson match even is, and if you can it's probably a broadway with some long submission teases into rope breaks (so he can say the line), 50 stiff kicks, and a spot that gave someone (usually Bryan) a serious head injury. There's tons of matches of his that I love that are nothing like that, but I think if Bryan has total control of a match those are the things he leans towards, and when he's not I do think he's sometimes a little too nice about working his opponent's match (especially in AEW; the Ospreay match is just an Ospreay match with Bryan Danielson slotted in, and the MJF Iron Man is just like nearly every MJF PPV match ever for the first 25ish minutes). Ironically I think a lot of his WWE run holds up because it forced him to work outside of those Danielson-isms and as such I think his run there is about half or more of his best work between his insane run of TV matches in and around 2013 and some excellent heel world title performances that I think outdo a lot of his ROH World Title matches (both in his 2012 & 2018-19 runs). Plus: Team Hell No. If turning that into an over act with dozens of great matches despite the goofy therapy gimmick and his partner being 2010s Kane isn't the act of a GOAT-tier wrestler I don't know what is.

Top-tier comedy guy who has a really strong match catalog if you dig for it. I think Honda is emblematic of what DDT as a promotion is more than anybody else and he's been around for a huge portion of its lifespan to boot (and that's before you look at his work in adjacent promotions like Gatoh Move/ChocoPro, TJPW & BAKA GAIJIN). I love his actual in-ring style when he's not just doing his shtick, full of great body language and simple impactful offense; you can tell he studies his Dusty tapes beyond just copying some moves. The Togo match is definitely his best, but I've always loved his DDT Extreme Title match against Akito (another of my DDT-lifer favorites who I wish I thought to nominate) from July 2015 in a "Fall to The Hell" match which is basically a No-Ropes 2-Man Battle Royale.

Dump is a really interesting one for me. I'm very much in the consistency & longevity camp for Best Ever conversations but I'm not opposed to wrestlers with short/curtailed runs or incredible peaks being among them. Dump stands out for having one of the most distinct short runs of any wrestler I could think of, one that has basically established part of the language of pro wrestling (you look at depictions of female heels in media, especially in Japan, you're likely seeing a character taking Dump's style almost wholesale; there's a reason she got that Netflix series). Her case is made on a handful of matches, teams, and rivalries with a relatively small group of people, but almost all of them are rightfully praised as among the best ever in their own right with Dump as a big part of that. There's few wrestlers that pull off a "hidden weapon" type of sequence as incredibly as prime Dump, and I'm hard-pressed to think of a more fucked up heel spot than her just nonchalantly stabbing those scissors into Yukari Omori's arm hard enough for them to stay there. Her post-retirement run is certainly not anything to write home about, but because of what it's framed as I can't really say it detracts from her case either, it just doesn't add to it. She's just going out there and doing the Dump Matsumoto shtick. To me it's the equivalent of Iron Sheik at the Mania X-7 Gimmick Battle Royale; Sheik was one of the most hated heels in company history back in the 80s and he's out there much older and slower and doing the same shtick but he's a legend so he wins and it's a fun moment. That's every modern Dump match to me; I can't hate it. I'd sooner believe someone using her brief WWF run as a knock against her given it was solid but unremarkable when multiple of her contemporaries had better runs there. Do I easily have Bull & Aja above her as locks on my list because of their longer careers with many more incredible matches to their name as they carried on some of what she established? Absolutely, but once I do my big Preference Revealer to help form my ballot I won't be shocked if Dump sneaks her way into ballot contention despite her short peak.