KB8

Our boy Tenryu might actually take an honest to goodness run at this top 10! I knew I wouldn't be the only Yumi Ikeshita voter, but cool to see another couple people having her on their list either way. Also another Tama vote! Hot damn!

I haven't finalised my list yet, but he's in that 18-21 bracket right now with Roddy Piper, Tully Blanchard and Takeshi Ono so depending on how I'm feeling when I finally submit the thing on Saturday or whatever, he will be...one of those four numbers. Probably.

The Sasha Banks/Mercedes Mone Battlebowl Final! Eddie is my favourite wrestler ever so I can't be impartial on this one, but I will say Ozaki has grown on me a lot over the last five-six years. I thought she was exceptional in that Devil Masami match from '93 where Devil is in her method acting Undertaker bag, she was my favourite part of the Dream Rush tag that I liked more on re-watch than I ever have before, she was really fun in all of the mid-90s GAEA stuff she popped up in, has the perfect sort of reckless violence and attitude for inter-promotional wrestling, etc. I haven't watched any post-2000s Ozaki other than one match from a few years ago, but obviously she has Eddie beat on longevity. I'll also say that while I'm not an Ozaki voter, I did at least consider her when going through the joshi candidates whereas 10 years ago I probably dismissed her in a heartbeat. She was nowhere near my list in 2016 while in 2026 she was...somewhat in the vicinity?

I'd be absolutely astounded if Danielson isn't the overall #1. Funk as #2 feels about as good a shout as any.

I've been watching a decent amount of 2010s Virus lately and he's made strong late case for jumping properly into my top 20. He was already hovering around the 21-35 bracket anyway, but the Hechicero match from 2016 gave him a nice jump and then I watched the Dr Cerebro match from 2015 (another one @cad mentioned a while back) yesterday and I came out of it thinking he might be the best ever at giving me exactly what I want in one of my three favourite styles of wrestling (the weird and wonderful lucha matwork~).

The order isn't the same, but swap in Hashimoto for Misawa and that might end up being the exact list of names in my top 10 as well.

Locks for the Top 100: Strong consideration for the Top 100: Chavo Guerrero Sr. Carl Greco Some consideration for the Top 100: Chigusa Nagayo CM Punk Ciclon Ramirez Curt Hennig Chris Benoit Chavo Sr. is right on that cusp of being a lock, but there are really very few people I'm considering for the 75-100 range of my list where I'd be 100% sure of them being there. I'm not a massive Chigusa fan but with each match of hers I watch the more I'm thinking she belongs. The Dump feud doesn't do a ton for me but as far as spectacles go they're all pretty crazy. While some of her peak 80s stuff falls a bit flat for me - basically a stylistic preference - there are times where she absolutely does jump off the page looking like one of the all-time great babyfaces. I really like most of the GAEA run in the 90s and honestly, that might be my favourite Chigusa. She could easily be in the strong consideration group, tbf.

Locks for the Top 100: Buddy Rose Blue Panther Barry Windham Bill Dundee Bobby Eaton Black Terry Butch Reed Strong consideration for the Top 100: Bret Hart Buzz Sawyer Billy Robinson Some consideration for the Top 100: Bob Backlund Bull Nakano Brock Lesnar Brian Pillman Rose is a top 10 contender and Panther won't be too far behind him. I could even see the order of those two switching because there's still a few big recent Panther matches I need to see. Hart will almost certainly be there in the bottom third but he's not quite a lock. Sawyer is a personal favourite and if I was going to 100% vote for someone based on squash matches alone he'd be close to the top of that pile. He was also a rabid maniac brawler and that doesn't hurt either. There are a handful of guys I want to revisit a bit more thoroughly before the deadline and Billy Robinson is one of them, so he has a decent shot of being there. If we had a ton of footage from his prime he feels like a no-brainer, but then we could say that about a goodly amount of people. Bull is someone who's just never quite resonated with me. The Dump's army stuff has never been my cup of tea but even after that there's been very little from her peak that I've properly latched onto. When that stuff does land it lands big though, and post-92 as she starts to wind down a bit I think she's pretty great. She wouldn't make the list today but if I catch a few more things she might sneak on.

Locks for the Top 100: Aja Kong Arn Anderson Andre the Giant Alexander Otsuka Akira Hokuto Akira Taue Strong consideration for the Top 100: Akira Maeda Atlantis Antonio Inoki Austin Aries Some consideration for the Top 100: Atsushi Onita Austin Idol The only one there from the Locks cluster that'll definitely land outside the top 50 is Taue. Hokuto might, but she's been trending upwards every year since the last vote, when she didn't even make my list. I think Otsuka landed dead on 50 the last time and he'll be about there again, probably. I had Austin Aries at 99 last time and I've actually watched a bunch of 00s indies since then, and his stuff has held up remarkably well. If anything I enjoy him more now than I did then, and at that point there was most likely a bit of nostalgia pushing me to vote for him based on how much I liked him 10 years before THAT. Maeda is about as close to a lock as possible without actually committing to him being a lock. The late 80s/early 90s Onita I've re-watched over the past few years has him in consideration more now than he was in 2016. Obviously he's a big time spectacle wrestler and great at it, but my favourite Onita might be the one getting his head caved in by karatekas before he barrels them into barbed wire ring ropes.

I reckon he's top 20 for me as well. I've re-watched the New Japan stuff Matt is talking about since I last posted about Murdoch in 2021 and he was like top 3 in the world in '86-'87. He's in that very top tier of wrestlers I'd be interested in watching against practically anybody.

I don't actually know who that fella is but apparently he has (or at least had) a wrestling school in the town 20 minutes away from where I grew up. So technically I got my Wrestlemania Moment.

The match against Jean Rabut from '65 is incredible as well. One of the best "pure" wrestling matches (whatever that means, I guess) ever. Of course the stuff with Le Petit Prince is mind-blowing too. He was awesome.

Hell of an opener with an absolutely tremendous nearfall. Rhea v Dom will outdraw Andre/Hogan from the Silverdome.

He's wanted to do that to those DC folk ever since they told him Black Adam couldn't hang with Batman.

I watched the February '96 match with Mascarita Magica towards the end of last year and it really is excellent. I wouldn't put it quite on the level of Damiancito/Cicloncito the following year, but it wasn't a million miles off it either. I also don't think I've seen that particular Fuego match so that's cool as well. I'll still likely have him around my top 20.