KB8

Fuck it

I brought up doing a Complete & Accurate of Yoshida in her GWE nomination thread a few days ago because: a) she's awesome so why the hell not? b) the ARSION stuff rules and it's probably my favourite joshi promotion ever and Yoshida is the primary reason for it, c) I haven't seen too much of her earlier AJW stuff and 00s Yoshida - like lots of 00s joshi, I guess - is pretty underexplored, and d) she's awesome so why the hell not? I had her at #69 for GWE 2016 based off of like a week's worth of watching her right before the deadline. I revised my list a couple years ago and I can tell you she was very many spots higher, and for 2026 I can see her being higher still. The ARSION peak is sublime, but is there enough outside that to make her a top 30 candidate? Is she a major peak candidate who's hurting a bit on longevity? Does she have the longevity but not a ton of quality beyond that awesome peak? I suppose that's what we're trying to find out. I may be joined on this journey by @elliott and I'm sure @El-P will have something to add as he may be a fan of hers. @Jetlag has also written about most of the ARSION run in his ARSION thread, which has been really useful as a point of reference. Big Stupid Master List of Shit You Should Definitely Watch will categorise matches into EPIC, GREAT, GOOD, FUN and SKIPPABLE, as Segunda Caida have a winning formula so why change it? I'll just start C&Ping stuff I've written here and on my dumb blog and it'll build from there. 1990 Mariko Yoshida & Yumiko Hotta v Bison Kimura & Madusa Miceli (AJW, 11/14/90) - FUN 1991 Mariko Yoshida & Akira Hokuto v Bull Nakano & Kyoko Inoue (AJW, 6/5/91) - GOOD 1992 Mariko Yoshida & Takako Inoue v Etsuko Mita & Mima Shimoda (AJW, 1/4/92) - FUN Mariko Yoshida & Takako Inoue v Debbie Malenko & Sakie Hasegawa (AJW, 4/25/92) - GREAT Mariko Yoshida v Kyoko Inoue (AJW, 8/30/92) - GOOD Mariko Yoshida, Yumiko Hotta & Toshiyo Yamada v Bull Nakano, Aja Kong & Kyoko Inoue (AJW, 9/15/92) - GREAT 1994 Mariko Yoshida v KAORU (AJW, 8/28/94) - GREAT 1995 Mariko Yoshida & Aja Kong v Kyoko Inoue & Takako Inoue (AJW, 3/21/95) - GOOD 1998 Mariko Yoshida v Rie Tamada (ARSION, 4/17/98) - EPIC Mariko Yoshida v Mikiko Futagami (ARSION, 5/5/98) - EPIC Mariko Yoshida v Reggie Bennett (ARSION, 5/5/98) - EPIC Mariko Yoshida v Yumi Fukawa (ARSION, 5/8/98) - GREAT Mariko Yoshida v Aja Kong (ARSION, 6/21/98) - GREAT Mariko Yoshida v Mikiko Futagami (ARSION, 8/9/98) - EPIC Mariko Yoshida v Michiko Ohmukai (ARSION, 8/31/98) - GOOD Mariko Yoshida v Reggie Bennett (ARSION, 8/31/98) - GREAT Mariko Yoshida v Ayako Hamada (ARSION, 8/31/98) - FUN Mariko Yoshida v Candy Okutsu (ARSION, 12/18/98) - GREAT 1999 Mariko Yoshida v Mika Akino (ARSION, 1/17/99) - EPIC Mariko Yoshida v Yumi Fukawa (ARSION, 9/26/99) - EPIC 2000 Mariko Yoshida v Aja Kong (ARSION, 10/17/00) - GREAT Mariko Yoshida v Ayako Hamada (ARSION, 10/17/00) - EPIC 2001 Mariko Yoshida v Yuu Yamagata (ARSION, 12/8/01) - GOOD 2002 Mariko Yoshida v Cheerleader Melissa (ARSION, 8/29/02) - FUN Mariko Yoshida & Yumiko Hotta v Sumie Sakai & Megumi Yabushita (AJW, 11/3/02) - GOOD 2003 Mariko Yoshida v Yumiko Hotta (AtoZ, 11/9/03) - GREAT 2004 Mariko Yoshida v Carlos Amano (GAEA, 4/30/04) - EPIC Mariko Yoshida v Sakura Hirota (GAEA, 11/3/04) - FUN 2006 Mariko Yoshida v Yoshiko Tamura (NEO, 11/3/06) - EPIC 2007 Mariko Yoshida v Atsuko Emoto (IBUKI, 1/28/07) - EPIC

What's the Inoki one from 1980? I don't think I've seen that before, which is exciting. Because every other one of those tags listed there are tremendous.

I went though a bunch of 2000s ROH late last year and I think I agree with Dylan's point in this thread about him being the best heel ROH ever had. Of all those candidates from that indie boom period I'd have him pretty high. Not sure yet if that gets him on a GWE 100 - I'd probably need to jump into the southern indie run mentioned in here at some point - but he was pretty great and I definitely never paid enough attention to him in the past.

I thought for absolute certain I'd seen every minute of Flair I ever needed to see after 2016 (or even 2013, honestly), but then I saw some of that 1980 babyface run, primarily from the Valentine feud, and man was he ridiculously fun. Truly awesome babyface energy, and not the sort of energy he'd bring to his babyface matches later, where he was pretty much still just Slick Ric but the crowd knew they were supposed to cheer him. He wasn't quite Slick Ric yet, not in 1980, not before the World Title run, and it was about as fresh as I ever could've hoped for out of a guy I've probably seen more often than any other wrestler in history. I don't know what his ceiling is this time, nor do I know his floor. I'd guess somewhere around 20-30. So not a whole lot different than last time, all things considered.

None of the Puerto Rico candidates were on my 2016 list. Right now the only one I'm sure will be there is Invader 1, but I might find space in the bottom quarter for a Chicky Starr or Carlos Colon (or Abby, as his Puerto Rico stuff was a hoot and primarily what shot him into contention). Hokuto will be there, and probably a few other joshi candidates I didn't vote for last time along with her. Probably Roman Reigns, who I wanted to throw a low vote to in 2016 but didn't. I'm not really sure who's definitely going to drop off yet. It might change again by 2026 anyway, but looking at my bottom 20 from five years ago as I try to put together an updated 2021 version, there are like 40 names I'd like to have in that 80-100 bracket and it'll mostly depend on how I'm feeling on the day for who gets in. I guess Austin Aries, who I had at 99 last time, falls off. He's about the only one that feels like a definite, though.

I guess I could say check out the Piper stuff in Portland, but I love that stuff with Brooks and Rose and Wiskowski and Martel and the Sheepherders there for much the same reasons I love all the other Piper stuff. You're not likely to find anything that changes your mind on the guy at this point so there are probably better ways for you to be spending your time.

He was maybe my favourite wrestler in the world back in 2013-14. CMLL TV was tremendous for a while there so there was decent stuff basically every week. I don't think the Casas feud had the most satisfying payoff, at least not in comparison to the incredible build-up, but the 6/28/13 trios is an absolute scorcher and Rush is at the centre of it.

Well that is very unfortunate. If they had an apuestas then I'll assume that's where the money is instead.

See what I mean?? That's awesome because I didn't know if the Gonzalez singles match was out there. I may even hunt it down this very night!

He was top 20 for me last time and he'll be right around there in 2026. A bunch of trios with him involved that I'd never seen before have popped up on YouTube over the last five years, and I imagine that'll be the case over the next five years as well (the lucha libre corner of YouTube really is a treasure trove that keeps on giving). He had a fairly short peak, but we have a better picture of what he was like now in those lean CMLL years of the mid-90s. The Llanes match from '94 was always praised and we now have some of the lead-in work to go with it, including an awesome trios match (that might've actually been out there before 2016, but I only saw it after the last vote). Random trios from '95 where he and Ray Gonzalez try to mutilate each other. More footage certainly doesn't dent his case, is what I'm saying. And even if that peak was short, holy shit what a peak it was.

Casas will probably be my #1 this time (up from #3 last time) and I want to do the week-to-week examination of him that Loss brings up in this thread. Not because I think I'll have much of anything to say about him that hasn't already, but because he's fucking awesome and that feels like a fun way to spend my time watching the pro-wrestling.

Thanks, NL. Agreed on those Strike Force/Islanders matches. I watched a bunch of them just before the 2016 vote and they pushed Martel into my top 40 (and pushed Tama onto my list). Since then I've watched a couple more, one of them being my favourite of the lot, so I'd expect him to do at least as well as he did last time.

What's the date on Martel/Zenk v Funks? I don't think I've seen that.

I'm admittedly a real low voter on those Sasha/Bayley matches (on Bayley in general, I guess), but I prefer Rousey/Charlotte to them as well. There are probably three, maybe four, Rousey matches I'd take over the Sasha/Bayley matches. Including Rousey/Sasha (which Sasha was awesome in, FWIW).

I've favoured peak a little more than longevity from all the way back when the first GWE started and Yoshida's peak, even without yet having seen her most widely acclaimed match from that run, is one of my absolute favourite runs from any wrestler ever. I've only seen bits of her 90s AJW stuff, but she was really fun mixing it up with Kyoko in a few of the matches I watched a while back. Just a really fun underdog babyface. Then ARSION comes along and she's amazing. One of the all-time best at milking a near submission and making people genuinely buy her giving up to wrestlers several rungs down the ladder. Obviously her grappling is stellar and the more of it I watched the more she felt like a hybrid of Kiyoshi Tamura (the speed and explosiveness) and Trauma I (the inventiveness of her matwork without feeling like it was done for the sake of flashiness). I actually watched some mid-2000s Yoshida and, I think I mentioned it in the general 2026 thread, but even if she wasn't *as* awesome as she was in '98/'99 she was still excellent. The Yoshiko Tamura match ruled and she was hand-leading a Cheerleader Melissa who'd had about three months' experience and most of it wrestling in a fairground to a decent bout. There's also a match against Atsuko Emoto (whom I'd never heard of and had never seen before or since) from a 2007 Ibuki show that had some fantastic stuff in it, though unfortunately the version I saw only had 17 minutes of the 30 minutes they wrestled. I'm a stupid huge Yoshida fan and I'd like to do a full Complete & Accurate over the next five years just to see how high I can justify having her. As of right now it might be top 30.

She had maybe the best rookie year of any wrestler ever, and even if Dav'oh's suggestion about her matches being laid out to a tee is almost certainly correct, there was more than enough of what she actually did within the framework of those layouts to make me think she just "got it" straight out the gate. Like, she was just about the best in the company at selling limb damage - or just selling in general, maybe - and had lapped most other wrestlers with literally ten times or more the experience of actually doing this pro-wrestling nonsense that she had. Captured Big Match feel, had charisma for days, was awesome at suddenly ripping out submissions from nowhere during matches, etc. I don't think she gets on unless she has another run, but I loved that year we got and I don't think she's a totally batshit insane low-end choice.

That Jaguar/Jackie Sato match from 12/16/80 is so great. Probably the match that sold me on deep diving 80s joshi in a more broad sense.

I'll probably vote for Kitahara this time and I want to go through Jetlag's list of stuff outside WAR/SWS. A vicious little bruiser who can take an otherwise fine midcard match and turn it into something awesome by losing the rag and trying to brutalise someone.

That match with him and Rick Steiner v Koko Ware and Italian Stallion from the '86 Crockett Cup also ruled. I voted for him last time and he'll likely be higher this time.

Starr is someone I'll consider for a lower end vote this time and that's largely because of the Puerto Rico footage, which I hadn't seen before the 2016 vote. Same for Abby, who I really wouldn't have even considered before but is someone I loved going through the Puerto Rico stuff. Invader 1 is an obvious lock. Boricua is also dead on about that footage bolstering already strong cases. Hansen was already my #1 in 2016, and even if he doesn't end up as that in 2026, seeing the Hansen/Colon feud has pretty much made him a top 5 candidate for life. Puerto Rico Terry Funk is also my favourite Terry Funk, and even if the PR stuff alone isn't responsible for this, it's a huge reason why he was somehow stupidly just outside my top 10 last time but will be a real #1 contender this time.

His big kneedrop also looked absolutely badass, to be fair.

I probably won't spend any time talking about Flair this time around. I was sort of bored doing it by 2016 so I don't really have any interest going around in circles again five-ten years later. I'll probably have him about where I had him last time - outside the top 20 but inside the top 30. So like, 27 or something, who the hell knows. I like OJ's take on things - how his ballot would essentially be a snapshot of where he is as a fan at a particular point in time. I approached 2016 pretty similarly to that, but as I've tweaked and updated my list sporadically since then I've leaned even more into that idea. I probably would've had Flair, Jumbo, Misawa and Jushin Liger top 5 in 2006 (I never took part in the smarkschoice GWE poll, though the WWF/E poll in 2008 was the first big internet wrestling nerd poll I did participate in, so here's to smarkshoice). My top 5 in 2016 never had any of them and likely won't have any of them in 2026. I sort of learned to stop thinking too much about where I've BEEN as a fan, of what I used to think was the pinnacle, and trust the judgment of where I'm at now (and was at in 2016), so what I thought fifteen years ago doesn't weight so heavy on my mind. If that's hipsterism or an example of being distracted by the shiny new toy then so be it*. Plus Negro Casas is better than all of them anyway. *tbh, I'll fully admit to being one of those "always looking for new discoveries" types. I've literally been watching this stupid nonsense since I was three years old so I've earned it.

I don't really have anything to substantiate this other than having a "feel" of what Matt likes based on all the stuff I've seen him talk about before (maybe that's substantiative enough?), but I get the sense Kandori might be more up his alley exactly *because* she's pretty unique, and in that sense brings some stuff to the table that might ease him in a little better. On the other hand you're both probably right in that she's not really representative of joshi as a style (that's a pretty broad way of looking at things, I know), especially if diving into 90s boom era joshi is the starting point.

I actually watched a bit of early-to-mid 00s joshi towards the end of last year and quite enjoyed it. Joshi's never been my favourite style of wrestling and that is not an era I ever would've thought I'd have the urge to dive into, but I mostly went after the Mariko Yoshida stuff (to see if she was still as awesome as she was in the late 90s, and I'm not sure she was AS awesome but she definitely was still awesome) and that led me onto some Yoshiko Tamura and then a smattering of other girls whose names I honest to god couldn't tell you now even with a gun to my head. Not a chance I'd have dedicated any time to deep diving 00s joshi during the 2016 project, but I wouldn't be dead against it this time if elliot (or whoever else) is throwing out recommendations. On another note, I've also been tweaking my 2016 list sporadically over the last five years and some parts of it are quite a bit different now compared to then. I just started a PhD and it's kicking the shit out of me already so who knows how much time I'll have to hit a bunch of blind spots over the next few years, but I've certainly hit some of the blind spots I had last time and I'll make a run at a few more before 2026 when I will nearly be 40 fucking years of age my goodness (no offence of course to any of the old(er) heads who are already there).