josephweirdness

Aja will be the highest ranking woman on my list, and I laid out a serious case for her here. I feel Aja's versatility is undersold as her bully heel work in the late 80s into the start of the 90s feels distinct from what she does as a top of the company ace through her red belt run, which even then is also still different from the more malicious veteran role she played in GAEA. Across the board in her career, she's moving between babyface and heel, sympathetic and imposing, and I don't think very many wrestlers ever have shown her capacity to switch up like that the way Aja does. Stylistically too, there's championship-style matches throughout her red belt days contrasted with gimmicked brawls like those against Bull and then later on the D-FIX heels in GAEA. She retains the asskicker persona, yes, but she does a hell of a lot with it in many different ways. You might also want to see her straight woman role in comedy matches against the likes of Sakura Hirota.

Just too inconsistent across the years to make the list despite some great stuff in there. Should be a real boon to him to get something as great as the 2019 Tetsuya Endo title match out of the latter given how quickly Endo became rather boring after that. I like Soup for the most part, and his AEW run has seen him show a little more diversity by adding some chickenshit heel work to his repertoire but I really don't see him being in consideration for my ballot at all.

Mistico over the last 4 years has been undeniable as the top star in Mexico. He's a great trios worker with his comebacks always feeling electric, and I think his challenger-of-the-month style singles matches have only improved in recent years. On first glance, he's a formula worker, using the classic shine/heat/comeback structure we know and love but that actually overlooks some of the nunaces he's introduced over the last couple of years especially. Take note of how well he protects the La Mistica and has incorporated the attempts for that move and subtle adjustments to get around it against opponents like Cavernario, Soberano Jr, or Virus. He benefits greatly from being the top dog in a company that just regularly churns out great matches by virtue of playing the hits (the CMLL house style trios match is maybe the most consistent match style of the decade). I've only just begun combing through the original run in the 2000s and it is certainly flawed. The high flying is spectacular and the connection to the crowd is there, but I think you can tell Mistico hasn't quite learned how to make the most of all that raw talent quite yet. I would argue his 2020s has presented much more refined and smarter version of all this. I don't know if I'll end up voting Mistico, if I do, he'll be a lower end pick, but he certainly deserves more scrutiny now than he got in 2016.

I did a more extensive breakdown of his case here. That said I'd like to push back on the idea that Moxley is too much of a mirror to his opponent. I'd argue that for better and worse, Moxley drives the matches that he's in more than he doesn't. I think that's become especially obvious in his most recent main event run where it feels like he very deliberately applied his style and philosophies to his matches regardless of opponent. This leads to mixed results like his inability to really mesh into anything cohesive with Swerve Strickland, but it also brings out the best out of someone like a Hangman Page or a Darby Allin. Is he though? Funk is an obvious influence and you 100% see that in Moxley's work but the idea that it's a direct cosplay feels incredibly unfair to me especially when someone like Dick Slater already exists to show us what Funk cosplay really looks like. Mox is expressive, he's a bleeder, he has charismatic physicality--is this Funk cosplay? Sounds to me like he's just applying classic pro wrestling techniques philosophies to his own work. Again, I agree that Mox takes Funk as inspiration, the man has said so himself. But nothing about Moxley has ever felt copy paste, in my experience.

Might as well chime in since my nomination kicked up a fuss. Re: the nomination itself, I don't think this is an insane choice whatsoever especially when we look at the precedent set by past nominations for this project. Jimmy Havoc is nominated for god's sake. In that sense, Priest's inclusion here is certainly no worse than any number of the BritWres or European indie candidates that received scrutiny in 2016. Priest's case is predicated on being the top worker on the American independent level: a case that mirrors the bulk of material that one might look at from any of 2000s super indie luminaries. Is Chris Hero's case really all the weaker if he never made it to the WWE, for example? I adamantly refute the idea that not being able to make it on TV is an indicator of talent especially because of the fact that 1. A worker might actively choose not to go on TV and 2. Talent is not determined by an executive's employment list. All of that would remain true even if Adam Priest wasn't also clearly already signed to AEW and ROH given his regular appearances on both products in the last several months. It would not be the first nor the last time that a wrestler was already under an AEW contract just without the official graphic being sent out online. Priest is 100% signed to that company. Putting my hand up and saying, I have been saying this and I know I'm not the only one. He might just be one of the most thoughtful wrestlers in the world today and one of the few with a fairly stringent commitment to old school American wrestling principles. Under his belt, he has two fairly major independent title reigns worth seeing: the ACTION Title reign in 2022 and the DPW World Title reign last year. Beyond that, he has the run in Uncharted Territory in 2022 that is basically a week-to-week television run that demonstrates his ability in a variety of different styles without ever betraying the core principles of his underlying work. Despite my nomination, I don't see myself voting for Priest in the ballot. I know that's anticlimactic after all this defending, but it genuinely is too early for the guy and the upcoming TV run might to do more to stunt his momentum than help it. All that said, I fully stand by the nomination because he's a damn sight better a worker than many who have already gotten this far and I wouldn't turn my nose up at anyone that chooses to have him on their ballot in the end either.