Scarletlikesounds

Oliver vs. Royal is such a wonderful glimpse into a world we don't have. BTW, has the German footage unlocked any of these guys? I keep hearing there's new German footage about but I haven't heard where or what it's got.

For 2036 I'm curious about all of the DPW guys. Kozone, Tankman, Manny Lo & Andrew Everett will all be looking to make their cases on the indies and in MLW. Jake Something & Adam Priest in AEW, and Lucky Ali, Jay Malachi & maybe even Jackson Drake in WWE.

Iroha & ZSJ are another top 200 but not 100 for me currently, but they're doing some of the best work in the world this year, I feel a little bad about their exclusions. Yehi & Kairi Sane are totally people who if they had a better last 5 years would be serious candidates. Yehi especially for me personally is such a bummer with how he turned out.

Ospreay, MJF, & Takeshita will never be on my list, I just don't like their styles. Fletcher has a chance to turn things around but he's super hit or miss as it is. Garcia is a guy where It seems like everyone has wanted him to be the next big thing for years and I just don't see it yet. Ill watch some more of him soon. Hangman is definitely a 2036 guy for me, Mox & Darby are already guys who barely rank outside my top 100. Castignoli & OC might've made it if I watched more. Wonder if Kevin Knights push will result in a future candidate? He's been really good lately and it's clear he's the company's next/current project.

He was so wrong and yet righter than he ever could've imagined

Also, since the two were mentioned, Horowitz & Schultz recs?

I think we're all kinda unanimous that Sherri is the one that got away this time, everyone I've talked to says they wish they'd gotten into her more beforehand and nominated her. 2036?

Whereas if I'm just comparing like Jon Cortez to Demus I'm forced to just highlight them on their individual strengths rather than have the grounds to negatively compare one to another.

The only issue with wrestlers out of time such as the aforementioned Regal & FTR is that they force comparisons to their inspirations. If you're FTR and you're one of the greatest tag teams of your generation, but then you wind up having to go up against Midnight Express, The Andersons & The Hart Foundation (granted I don't think anyone is running around saying Jim Neidhart > FTR lol). Regal has to go up against the insane pool of talent that is WoS.

In the immortal words of Takeshita, "LET'S FUCKING GOOO!"

In terms of local to me, Darius Lockhart runs a promotion called ASE focused on all-black wrestling here in NC and he made my list. I also considered both Trevor Lee & Arik Royal, legends of CWF, but landed just outside the list for me. In terms of guys local to specific areas, I had Aquiles like you mentioned, Leo Burke is a journeyman but maybe he counts as a maritime legend?

I don't know if Id say any are better than Senka Akatsuki yet, but I adore some of these NOAH rookies, Daiki Odashima is the one who's already leveled up but Midori Takahashi and Hiroto Tsuruya are really good and I wanna look further into them. Depending on if you can stomach NXT there's Oba Femi & Kendal Grey. Grey is a bit too spotfesty and "lemme figure out my next move" for me to put her that close to Akatsuki but she is really damn good as far as current americans go. Oba Femi definitely might be a bit of bias for me cause he's one of the guys who I first got into when I got into wrestling in late 2024, but his rookie year saw him putting on constant 7/10s or above with many different wrestlers of extremely varying skill and experience levels, and carried the program with a great title run out the gate. Once again though, heavily dependent on tolerance for modern WWE/NXT. Finally, I really fuck with Shinno from Marigold who had a great debut match, just constantly fighting and screaming bloody murder and hanging on like every moment of the match is her last chance. So overall, no current rookies beat Senka unless you have a preference for Seri, Selene Misora maybe keeps putting out bangers and I look into her more, or maybe I find some whenever I finally get into AWG. I haven't really looked into the rookie years of most of my favorite wrestlers tbh. How was Nakanishi in her debut year? Ive seen her be incredible really young.