KB8

Kendrick at #9 is gonna be hard to top. Awesome.

May I suggest... The original Funkasaurus. Done!

I would do that already if the Tama pic worked...... (EDIT: in response to Woof, obviously. EDIT 2: actually there is no Tama pic because the folk who finished lower than 500 don't even get one)

That Hakushi pic is fuuuuucking great. I don't think I'm going to come out the other end of this project without an avatar for once. Jerry Estrada was mine. And of course I was the high vote (only three names from my ballot have dropped so far and I've been the high vote on all three). I'm an unashamed mark for the guy who is OJ's least favourite wrestler of all time. A sleazy, coked up headcase of a pro-wrestler who will eat a tope by going six rows deep into the fixed seats, before crawling out from under the debris like Alice Cooper's zombie doppelgänger. Underrated title match worker and someone I always enjoy in apuestas because he constantly looks like he's on death's door because he probably is. Side note: about five pictures in the countdown thread so far haven't shown up properly for me, and three of them are guys I voted for. Maybe someone's trying to tell me something.

Not surprised I was the high voter on Hector Guerrero, even at #75. I'm actually kind of surprised someone else voted for him. He was like an 80s Eddie so how am I not gonna vote for him based on that alone? He's been one of the best guys on the NWA Classics stuff and the Texas Death Match with Lothario is fucking incredible. Him jumping out of an egg in a multicoloured chicken costume was also the greatest moment in the history of our great sport: the Hogan Slamming Andre of egg-hatchings, if you will. Hector ruled.

The Cornette and Kobayashi pictures are probably the top 2 so far. Was that Okabayashi wearing a John Cena sweatband as well? Sapp getting a #66 vote might be the wackiest thing so far. I never knew Javier Cruz finished so high in the '06 vote. Man, he took drop this time around. I had him on my list at one point, but he felt more like a 100-175 level guy and eventually bit the bullet. Although I do still love that Estrada hair match from '89 that I think is OJ's least favourite match in history.

Tama's the first of my list to go. Interesting that all three voters for him had him in the bottom ten (with me being the high voter at 90). I wound up watching a ton of Islanders stuff a few weeks before the deadline and thought he was fun as fuck with some of my favourite stock bumps of anybody ever. I wish they got a longer run as a babyface team, but he was pretty great as soon as they turned heel as well. I basically love Tama and 148 people were wrong when compiling their ballots by not voting for him.

Demus, Fuyuki and Pierroth were all on my list in the lower reaches at one point, but I wound up dropping them a ways back. Demus probably came closest to making it since I wanted to rep the minis, but it wasn't to be.

I will post a list of nominees not getting votes today. Then start with the lowest ranked wrestlers moving forward to number 1. Expect the final 3 to come out the last day of April. Awesome. This'll be fun.

At this rate I'm not sure there'll be a single wrestler who appears on every ballot.

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.