KB8

Ballot's in. I wanted to add comments and recommended matches to a lot of guys, but I just don't have the time to do it this weekend. Either way, this has been a great project and I'm glad I participated. Because of how I am with my hobbies I tend to go for months on end without watching any wrestling at all, but for the last four/five months I've watched a metric ton of stuff to try and come up with a ballot I'm happy with. I was even inspired enough by Dylan to deep dive back into joshi again over the last couple weeks, and I'm glad I did because I wound up really enjoying a bunch of what I did watch, more than I've enjoyed joshi in a long time. I'm kind of annoyed with myself that I never did the same sort of deep dive into Euro/British stuff, though. That's the one real glaring blind spot on my list. Maybe for 2026.

I probably should've watched their May match before checking this one, but this felt like it was still pretty easy to follow on its own. I don't think I've seen Fukawa wrestle before, but she can handle herself on the mat. She's not as quick as Yoshida, though, and it kind of leads to a few moments during the early exchange where Yoshida has to leave herself open or feed Fukawa in semi-obvious fashion. It's not massively glaring or anything, though. Thought Yoshida was really awesome in this, particularly as the match goes on and she can't seem to put Fukawa away. Fukawa kicks out of an air raid crash and Yoshida has this great look of almost shock before quickly gathering herself to go in again for the kill. Then Fukawa somehow makes the ropes when it looks like Yoshida has her Volk Han'd in the middle of the ring and Yoshida's "fuck sake, this should not be taking this long" expression was awesome. Fukawa sort of targets Yoshida's knee towards the end and I dug Yoshida's selling of it. It's pretty subtle, but at one point she tries to stand up and the leg buckles briefly, so Fukawa just launches herself at that leg like a shark smelling blood. Finish got an audible "What?!" reaction out of me as well. This was really good. I feel like I need to see every single thing Yoshida did in 1999, and I can't say I've ever thought that about any other joshi worker for any other year ever.

This was pretty excellent. I've watched a lot of Yoshida over the last few days and one thing about her matches from this period that is always great is the struggle over submission nearfalls down the stretch. They really milk the drama in this towards the end, but it's just on the right side of dramatic without ever feeling like it's overstepped that line. This was the first Yoshida match of many I watched yesterday morning, so my memory of specifics isn't great, but there was one Futagami submission that Yoshida found herself in for about two minutes straight and it never felt like overkill ala the ankle lock in Angle/Shawn from Wrestlemania. To be fair to Futagami she really worked to keep hold of Yoshida and force the submission, always trying to hook another limb or shift weight to take advantage of potential openings, but Yoshida's utter desperation in trying to make the ropes certainly kept Futagami honest. It's a staple I've noticed in a lot of those Yoshida matches, and it was especially impressive in this. I'd never seen nor heard of Futagami before this, but I'm not surprised she made her home lower down the card. She was relentless at points, though, and that seemed to force Yoshida to up her game in return. I never cared much for the fighting spirit pop up either, but it did at least lead directly into the finish, so it's whatever.

Ono's a lock for my list. The five minute Ikeda match is an absolute fucking slaughterhouse. Man, I need to go back and re-watch all of that 2010 FUTEN.

I've watched a few Masami matches recently and would probably agree with you that she has some of the best facial expressions in joshi (I can't really commit to that fully since you've probably watched - literally - at least a hundred more joshi matches than me in the last few weeks, but still, it's an impression I got without COMPLETELY going down the joshi rabbit hole again). Are you planning on talking about Ozaki at some point? I'm really interested in seeing where you fall on her.

I haven't watched him week to week, and there's still a fair chunk of Portland stuff I'm yet to see from '81-'83, but even as it stands he's a top 10 guy for me. I can't really say anything Matt hasn't already, but yeah, he was tremendous.

Yeah, I've loved Dylan's recent write-ups for the joshi candidates and it's actually convinced me to sort of reopen that book when I thought it had been well and truly closed. Kandori's someone I should've probably revisited anyway, so I got a start on that this morning. I've only watched the Masami match and the 8/93 Inoue match so far, but they won't be the only ones I watch/re-watch. Masami match I didn't LOVE, but it had enough there for me to hold onto, it never really lost me at any point, and I thought Kandori was pretty excellent in it. Thought the Kyoko match was really fucking great. Like, a lot of joshi loses me and it loses me early, but this grabbed me straight away and never let go. Kandori's selling, the way she carried herself, how much or little she would give Kyoko at different points of the match; she was awesome in it. There are some more Kandori matches from the yearbooks I'll go back and re-watch now, and I feel like I should check out that Toyota match from '98 as well.

I've got him listed. He's bottom 15, but he's 100% not dropping off. Re-watching a bunch of MX stuff a few months ago combined with the new Houston matches on NWA Classics solidified him. Has some of the best kneedrops ever. Condrey destroying Tommy Rogers with knees while Cornette chokes him with the tennis racket and Eaton is running distractions as every woman in the arena is ready to riot -- that's the pro wrestling to me. I love all of the other nasty little touches Condrey adds as well, like stomping on a guy's ankle or fingers. Obviously an awesome tag wrestler, and that sort of thing has been pretty huge with me when ranking guys. I love Condrey.

They're side-by-side on my list right now with Eddie one spot higher.

Well that's as good a place to start as any! Thanks.

What are the grumpy old man Jun performances I should watch before the deadline? I'm kind of having a hard time placing him (I WILL place him, of course; just not sure where) and I think a lot of that is down to 2010s Japanese wrestling being a pretty big blind spot for me. If there's anything there that adds to his case (grumpy old man performances will go a long way with me), throw it at me.

I liked that Tenryu match a fair bit, FWIW. Part of that might've been down to being a huge Tenryu mark and getting to see him work the way he did in that match, but I don't remember having any complaints about Mil during it, either. Other than that, I literally couldn't tell you the last time I watched a Mil Mascaras match. Probably close to a decade. He's honestly not someone I've sought out during this project because my memory of him was that he wasn't a guy I'd consider for the ballot.

I've started watching the Islanders/Strike Force series, which I'd never seen before, and holy hell has he been a fucking blast so far. I've actually been a fan of the guy for a long time, but somehow I'd never checked out that feud. I feel like if I go back and watch some of his babyface stuff again I'll end up listing him. I already really want to...

Lane's one of a handful of guys I'm thinking about for my bottom spot. What might keep him off in the end is that I'm not sure there's much of a case for him being the best guy in any of his tag teams (I assume the three Dylan is referring to are Midnights, Fabs and Heavenly Bodies?). He's been involved in plenty of tags I'd happily call great, but I'm not sure how great HE was in any of them.

I said in the career babybface thread that re-watching the Valentine feud would likely shoot Tito up my list, and hasn't it just. I still have a couple of their matches to go, but that feud is really awesome and even better than I remembered. Tito has to be one of the best "babyface fire" guys in US history, right? Among his contemporaries like Steamboat, Martel, etc. I think he brought the most believable hate and fire, and I'm not sure it's terribly close. Not that Steamboat and Martel were meek, but the 10/84 Tito/Greg match where he's coming back from the knee injury is ten minutes of Tito going total fucking apeshit and it was amazing. Steamboat never hit that level of intensity even after Randy Savage crushed his larynx. I've ever seen Martel hit it. They've gotten "fired up" before, but not like Tito against Greg where it looked like he literally wanted to kill him at points. It's been a while since I've watched any of the Tito/Savage feud, but I think I'm gonna re-watch that as well after I get done with the Valentine series. I remember him getting plenty pissed off in that as well, and the no holds barred match from MSG has always been a huge personal favorite of mine. I also want to check out some of the Strike Force/Islanders matches that were being pimped in the Islanders Microscope thread. Not necessarily because I expect they'll feature Tito going nuts, but rather because I've never seen them before and right now I feel like I should watch as much good Tito as I can find. I'm not sure how high he goes, but he's locked down a spot. He was pretty damn great.

It's Regal's WWE run that really fires him up my ballot. I actually watched all of the WCW footage on Will's Regal set a few years ago and thought that, while it was generally a great run, there were times where he maybe smothered guys too often. I mean, this is Regal and if you want someone taking the majority of a match then it might as well be him, but I still came out of it feeling a tiny bit cold on it. The WWE run is really stellar, though, right up to the NXT Cesaro match from 2013. I'm not sure how high he goes yet, but he'll do well.

Going through the 1993 yearbook, I thought he was definitely the best wrestler in the world that year. Other than that I generally agree that there might not be one single year where he's an absolute slam dunk, runaway WOTY, even if he's in the discussion for some of those years. But in '93, man was he fucking tremendous. The New Japan/WAR feud is my favourite feud ever in wrestling and Tenryu was incredible against every single person he matched up with, from Hashimoto (who's also top 5 for the year) to Chono to Kido to fucking Michiyoshi Ohara. I'm pretty much echoing what you already said, but still, it bears repeating. If I had to whip up a top 10 matches for the year, I think Tenryu would be in five of them, and one would be my MOTY. You mention 1989 there, and you're dead right about him being great then. I watched the Tenryu/Hansen v Jumbo/Kobashi tag from July this morning and I thought Tenryu was fucking spectacular in it. It's about as good an example as any of him selling for guys much lower down the card than him. I mean, Kobashi might've been a prodigy, but Tenryu was so awesome selling down to his level and making him look like a young stud (while Hansen steamrolled him and gave him almost nothing at all). Then Kobashi would bite off more than he could chew and Tenryu would stare him down before slapping his teeth out. Fast forward thirteen years and here's Tenryu in 2002, at 52 years old, making another potential WOTY run, being a cantankerous old bastard towards guys like Kiyoshi Miyamoto and Kaz Hayashi, having a great match build around legwork and blood loss against a wildly inconsistent Mutoh, and doing modern day bomb throwing epics with Kojima. He's one of the three guys I'm left strongly considering for my #1 at this point, but if I could only watch one wrestler for the rest of my life then he'd definitely be top of THAT list.

Tentatively: Rey is somewhere around my top 15, Steamboat is somewhere around my top 25, and Martel and Morton are somewhere between 30 and 40. Tito is bottom quarter right now, but I'm going to re-watch a handful of matches from the Valentine series for the purposes of seeing where Greg lands, so I don't doubt Tito will get a boost from that.

He's climbing his way back up my rankings after the last couple days. I watched the Jumbo/Tenryu v Choshu/Yatsu series mostly to see how high Choshu would go, but I came away thinking Jumbo was excellent in all of it. I mean, I remembered all four guys being great during it, especially in matches like 1/26/86, but I guess I'd watched so much late 70s/early 80s Jumbo recently that I didn't much care for that I forgot how good Jumbo was when he was GOOD. So I went and revisited some stuff from the '89-'92 period, which is my favourite stretch of his career by a million miles. God damn is 6/5/89 a fucking transcendent piece of the pro-wrestling. I had it below 1/26/86 on my All Japan 80s ballot (tag was my #1, Jumbo/Tenryu was #2), but I'd switch them now. It's never resonated with me before the way it did this morning. From the micro to the macro it's incredible, and I thought Jumbo was the star of it. It's sort of a novel performance from Tenryu in that he feels like such an underdog, and of course I loved that, but Jumbo's performance might be one of the three best of his entire career. I also watched a couple of the lesser six-man tags from 1992, and while the matches weren't necessarily blowaway I thought Jumbo was very good in them. That's probably not very surprising, but still. I think I'll watch some more before the deadline as well, since I'm kind of back on a Jumbo high right now. Honestly, I think I'll still end up ranking him outside my top 20 because of how uninteresting I find the majority of his pre-working with Choshu stuff to be (though that's an All Japan house style issue and Jumbo certainly isn't the only one I find uninteresting from that period), but ageing Jumbo trying to hold onto his place in the world and beat back the potential usurpers in Tenryu, Misawa and pals is still a near-four year run that I will absolutely get behind. And man, 6/5/89 is so, so good.

My buddy and I used to love him showing up on random WCW shows back in the day, and that ladder match from Starrcade 2000 is a fun train wreck of a spotfest.. He also had some fun stuff in M-Pro, but he might've been the weakest guy in Kaientai DX. Actually, I'd probably say he was. I haven't watched a match with him in it since the Kondo match mentioned above. In 2006 I liked it. I re-watched it a few years ago and didn't.

One thing about Kofi that makes him stand out to me in a way not many people do*, is that he will regularly perform a dive where the first part of it looks great, getting some crazy height on it and at times some near-Ohtani-level gracefulness...then when he connects with whatever the actual move is it ends up looking every bit as lousy as it looked good at the start. He can go from awesome to terrible literally over the course of performing a highspot. Most of the Kofi stuff I've seen - not a lot - has actually ranged from okay to good, but I say that having really only watched pimped matches involving him, and those matches have usually involved guys like Drew McIntyre, Cesaro, Daniel Bryan and The Shield being the better guys in those matches. I don't hate him or anything, but I don't think he's very good, either. *not necessarily in a good way

I'd watch Vader/Choshu from 6/89, Jimmy. I actually re-watched it tonight and it was fucking awesome. I don't remember where I had it on my original New Japan 80s ballot, but if I had to redo it now I would probably have it top 20.

There's no way I'm not voting for him. I mean, he won't be super high, but I love him and he's genuinely one of my favourite wrestlers ever.

I started watching a bunch of 1994 WWF a few years ago and Owen really stood out as one of the best guys in the company, which I guess isn't a super high bar, but still. He was consistently good. I'd agree that he doesn't necessarily have a litany of outstanding matches, but I usually always find him to be individually fun. I'm not sure it's enough to get him on my ballot (honestly, it's probably not), but he'll act like a total shithead and wheel kick someone's teeth out on the regular so he wins points for that.

I wouldn't necessarily say it's out of vogue now, although I really don't pay enough attention to know for sure. It might be for all I know. I got the impression it certainly was a few years back, though; or at least aspects of the style, like early matwork "not going anywhere"/feeling perfunctory, the first half of the match being disconnected from the second half, etc. Those criticisms don't only apply to New Japan juniors matches, but it felt like those juniors matches copped the most flak for it.