KB8

I've watched a whole lot of Fujiwara this month, particularly his 1987 New Japan run where I'd probably call him the best wrestler in the world that year, and holy smokes I think I forgot just how amazing that guy was (even having him all the way down at #7 last time). His performance in the 8/29/87 match with Maeda is one of the best single-match performance I've ever seen, from his selling to his aggression to his obvious application of strategy (or at least communicating the IDEA of strategy in a contest that is predetermined), he was out of this world great. I think right now it's basically a toss up between him and Tamura for who's going to be my second-highest ranked wrestler from Japan in 2026. What a pro wrestler.

Another fine entry into one of the greatest match-up scrapbooks in history. This wasn't as heated as the two matches from '87, but it had a lot of the same things going for it. Initially I thought they were going to work a more grounded contest, one that wasn't built on Fujiwara being a bastard and forcing Choshu to be the same. They even started with a knucklelock, much like a nice sporting contest might. Then Fujiwara headbutted Choshu dead in the face and I mean DEAD in the face and that was the end of that. I don't know what it is about Choshu but Fujiwara is a man possessed every time he steps in the ring with him. Did he hate him for real? I've never seen him not try to choke the life out of Choshu any time they square off. At one point Choshu was flat on the canvas and Fujiwara stood over him, one foot planted on Choshu's hair to keep him pinned, staring at him in obvious contempt, then let him back up just to slap him as hard as possible. The match slowed down a bit when Choshu took over, but he always has that quality where he'll grind someone down then unleash a huge burst of offence, where even a snapmare will look like it comes from a place of malice. Choshu goes after the leg for a little bit and I love how savage he comes across when he has a guy in the corner. This time he wrapped Fujiwara's leg in the rope and started throwing kicks, hit a couple nasty back elbows to the neck, used his weighty advantage to keep Fujiwara stuck in there, just some really mean corner offence. You still get the sense Fujiwara's biding his time and he even manages a tentative run at a Fujiwara armbar, in case Choshu forgot who he was dealing with. Great bit where Fujiwara is on the apron and Choshu is peppering him with shots, then as Fujiwara steps through the ropes he pauses, waits for Choshu to throw another one, and as he does Fujiwara headbutts him in the stomach. First lariat comes after Fujiwara locks in the armbar too close to the ropes and takes umbrage with the ref' forcing the break, but then he dodges the second and grabs it again out the corner to a massive pop. These two are always great at milking that big lariat into Fujiwara armbar counter in their matches and people go nuts for it every time. Choshu cracking Fujiwara with a punch as the latter winds up for a headbutt was incredible and not a single person in history is better at selling a lariat decapitation than Fujiwara.

Fucking hell what a match. Is this the best Fujiwara v Maeda bout? It's been ten years since I've watched any of them but if there's a better one then I need to check it out again, because I thought this was a masterpiece. I mean I've watched a handful of amazing Yoshiaki Fujiwara performances the last few days and this might be the best of the lot. I thought he was absolutely phenomenal in this. People much smarter and far earlier to the party than me have written many words about how Fujiwara is one of the best defensive wrestlers ever. They've written many words about how he's someone who conveys actual strategy in wrestling better than maybe anyone else. Words upon words about his matwork and skill as a grappler. Countless paragraphs about his selling. Just a whole bunch of stuff typed up and flung onto the internet singing his praises. All of that is present in this bout, and all of it to a stupidly high level. It started with him weaving in and out, lots of energy without overextending. He throws a little kick to Maeda's knee - specifically the knee; it wasn't just a leg kick - and goes for a kneebar, but generally speaking he's happy to keep most of this on the feet. We even get a glimpse of his striking early as he reels off a quick combo of body punches and a slap, then he immediately backs up as Maeda stalks him down. And that kind of sets the tone for much of this. Fujiwara isn't as prolific a striker as Maeda, but these were some of the best strikes I've ever seen him throw and by christ he was laying them in. There were punches to the body, slaps to the face, punches right to the temple, full blown Tenryu punts to the head, those nasty kicks to the knee, it was as vicious as I'd ever seen him and that was even before the headbutts (just wait). You question how viable a strategy that might be because Maeda will inevitably catch him with a howitzer, and yet the whole time he's doing this he's grinning and throwing goofy feints and very clearly reeling Maeda in. You can put it down to him being a carny and you might be onto something, but if you've seen one Fujiwara match where he's setting traps then you've seen a dozen and this was classic Fujiwara. It really had the feel of a red hot young sports team coming up against a group of veterans, where the latter have seen it all before and know how to use their experience to manipulate an outcome. You can see it unfolding and you KNOW it's happening, but the young guys either can't and stick to what had been working up until now, or they can and are powerless to actually do anything about it. Fujiwara's selling is amazing from beginning to end. Maeda obviously gets his licks in and there are several moments where Fujiwara will sell them brilliantly. Moments where you can find yourself getting super pretentious trying to write about them because it's like, this is pro wrestling not fucking Broadway but I don't know man, they don't teach this at your Royal Academy of Drama or whatever. The very first shot Maeda lands, Fujiwara stumbles in the corner and half slumps to the mat, and as Maeda throws another shot Fujiwara catches it, grabs hold and almost curls around the foot for a few seconds just to recover. There are shots that partially land and Fujiwara laughs them off, still goading Maeda, then there are shots that land more than partially, that clearly sting, and he laughs at those ones BECAUSE they sting. There's a bit later where Fujiwara's been downed for an 8-count and is visibly rocked, and as Maeda presses ahead Fujiwara backs into the corner for some respite, hanging through the ropes while Maeda throws knees to the body. The first chance Fujiwara gets he grabs Maeda and switches their position, then he pins Maeda in the corner and throws some shots to the body and head, but between those flurries you get the sense his goal is more to keep the fight in the corner for a minute just so he can recuperate. It was such a cool bit of defence from the best defensive wrestler ever. He's also the best headbutting bastard ever and this might be the GOAT Fujiwara headbutt spot. He actually hadn't thrown any in the match before the last couple minutes, and it wasn't even him who started it. Maeda's frustration had boiled over, because it was always going to, and as he backed Fujiwara into another corner it was him who threw that first headbutt. Fujiwara took it and covered up, absorbing a few body shots, then when Maeda paused Fujiwara just smashed him in the jaw with one of the grossest headbutts ever. This was a genuine headbutt to the face, not one of those bowling ball headbutts that makes you wince when you hear one head clonk off another. I mean both types are hellish but I think the surprise factor of this was what made it truly vile. The finish is pretty much perfect. Fujiwara had been throwing those little kicks to Maeda's knee all match. They all bent the knee at awkward angles and he was clearly using them to try and set up something else, but Maeda was always onto it and nothing materialised. Maeda throws a kick to the body and Fujiwara buckles over like he's been shot, so Maeda throws another, because why wouldn't you? And the old bastard knew it was coming because he caught that kick, booted Maeda's planted leg twisting it at a disgusting angle (I'm talking snapped MCL angle), and followed up with the kneebar. Just a wonderful finish to a wonderful match, with a wonderful Fujiwara performance. And maybe the best shoot style match to ever happen outside of an actual shoot style promotion.

This kind of swung between decent enough and balls out awesome. On the one hand that's a little disappointing because you can't help but want the balls out awesome to be the constant, but on the other hand pretty decent is pretty decent, you know? How loudly can we really complain? I think this feud only lasted about a month and that was definitely nine months too short. I actually thought the best parts of this were even better than the best parts of the January 2nd match, though they were rooted in the same idea (or PHILOSOPHY, if you will). Kimura still has serious ill will for Fujinami and this time Fujinami is less forgiving when his old partner blatantly punches him in the jaw. Fujinami wrestles like someone who'd rather do that - wrestle - than have a fist fight, but he won't give Kimura the same leeway he did before. The early grappling had a nice intensity to it and I loved that they both decided to put that to the side so they could have a stand up exchange in full boxing stance. Moments like that happened throughout, where one or both - though most often it was Kimura - would let their tempers boil over and someone would get cracked in the mouth. The first slap Fujinami threw landed flush and Kimura shot him this look of "I really hate you, you know that?" When Kimura next backed him into the corner everyone knew what was coming, and I love that Fujinami just stood there and braced himself, daring Kimura to throw his best shot and get it over with. It was almost derisory, like even leaving himself open so Kimura could hit him unimpeded wouldn't matter in the long run, confident as he was that he was still The Ace and Kimura never would be. I'm sure that sat brilliantly with Kimura. I'm also sure it added a little mustard to every closed fist he threw at Fujinami after the fact, and he threw a good fucking few of them let me tell you. There was one punch flurry in particular that was incredible and I guess Kengo Kimura is super underrated as a puncher? The leg lariat plays a part again, but I'm with Sleeze in wishing they played up the first one that connected a little more. I thought it came off like a bit of an afterthought, which is strange considering it was a huge part of the feud up until now. That might be nitpicky though, because I did really like how Kimura never seemed to be satisfied and would lift Fujinami's shoulders on a few pin attempts (like after the leg lariat). Either he was messing with Fujinami because he knew he wasn't beaten yet anyway or he was messing with him because he thought he was VERY beaten, but as soon as he did it you got the sense he was wrong one way or the other. When Fujinami countered the third leg lariat and put him in the Scorpion you pretty much knew Kimura had fucked up. He held on as long as he could and nearly made it to the ropes, but in the end Fujinami is The Ace and Kimura is not.

Man, Saito was the ultimate badass. Sleeze describes this as Saito working as Arn Anderson and that's totally apt, as he spends the majority of the match trying to wreck Kimura's bandaged up knee. Kimura does not take kindly to this and starts throwing wild potato punches to the cheek, so Saito grabs him and puts him on his head with a backdrop. This was some real mean leg work from Saito. All of the holds were tight and you knew he was looking for that Scorpion Deathlock. He also hit one of the cleanest dragon screws you've ever seen, made even better by the fact it was a reversal to Kimura going for the leg lariat. I liked Kimura's scrappiness as well and you could tell he had a chip on his shoulder in '87. Although you maybe question whether that mean streak hampered his judgment because going for a top rope kneedrop with a bad wheel was probably a risk too great to be taking, especially against the king of the Scorpion Deathlock. Pretty much the ideal 12-minute midcard bout.

This was pretty awesome, and maybe the best mixture of shoot and pro style in a tag match that New Japan produced from around this time (that '86-'88 period with all the shoot style guys, between the original UWF closing down and the second iteration starting up after Maeda shoot kicked Choshu in the eye socket). I actually thought this was a little more shoot than pro (at least in terms of pacing) so it was mostly back and forth the whole way, which is fine when the transitions are this strong, but I would've loved an extended heat segment somewhere to really fire it up a level. After all I'm a 90s kid who was raised on the tag team prowess of the Headshrinkers and Men on a Mission, I can't help but be set in my ways. The roles are pretty well established -- Yamazaki is the young technician with picture perfect striking and rapid fast feet, a real prodigy with the sky as his limit. He's in there with three-quarters of the shoot style Mount Rushmore so you expect him to play whipping boy, but I like that they almost circumvented that with the existing injuries to Maeda and Takada. The former has a taped up forehead from the Strong Machine mugging the previous week and Takada has a bandaged up thigh, so there are a couple bullseyes for Yamazaki to tee off on and tee off on them he does. Those moments worked as plausible momentum swings, where he could drag himself back into the fight with a flurry of kicks to the thigh without it feeling like Takada was giving him too much. Fujiwara was properly fired up as well, maybe because he knew that he was tagging with a kid and might need to carry the load a bit. He's the one who starts tearing at that Maeda bandage, then Yamazaki follows suit because why wouldn't you follow the godfather? Lots of killer strikes, snug submissions attempts, nasty suplexes and a great final pairing to cap it off. One or two weird bits of selling, but when everything else is so on point who really gives a shit?

This never quite hit the heights that the pre-match mugging promised. It wasn't really worked like a match where one of the participants had been smashed into a ring post several times by the other opponent in the not too distant past. No real sense of Maeda being out for revenge, even when SSM jumped him again here and they had to be separated before the bell. And I know that's judging something for what it isn't rather than what it actually is, but when you're all about the chaos and you've got the prospect of Maeda right there ready to bring it then it's sort of hard not to be disappointed. Still, this was alright and even pretty good when they started whomping on each other. You never quite know for sure if Maeda's taking liberties so the strike sections were super heated. Maeda threw a goodly number of kicks that I would not like to be taking and Strong Machine was throwing headbutts, some mean lariats, even a few nasty kicks of his own. The parts when they took it to the mat were a bit dry, though. It wasn't even that it was matwork as such, it was really more a case of someone grabbing a hold and struggling to apply it before the other forced the break or escaped. Towards the end the heat picks up nicely and the teased count out grabbed the crowd, so they were biting on everything after that. Strong Machine injures his shoulder missing a top rope elbow so the ref' checks for a potential stoppage, and while this is going on Maeda is gesturing to the crowd that he's going to break something and then he kicks the shoulder to bits. I know he's not for everyone but by god I love Maeda.

This was like two thirds really good and one third awesome. It's a 30 minute draw, but it only starts to feel like a 30 minute draw when there's an announcement that the time limit is imminent (I speak no Japanese but "2 minutes remaining" is truly the universal language of pro wrestling). Those first two thirds were fairly even, neither side really sustaining an advantage. I thought it came off as a nice slow build though, as opposed to them just killing time because they knew they were going 30. Then again it's these four so even some blatant time-killing would've been at least entertaining. Everyone was great in this and every possible match-up ruled. And yeah, they had the amazing running theme of everybody clonking each other with headbutts. I don't even remember who started it, maybe Saito though I guess the smart money would be on Fujiwara, but they all got in on it and I loved how they'd work those headbutts into standard exchanges. Saito lumped Murdoch with a couple and Dickie blocked a third with his forearms, which popped the crowd huge, then he retaliated with an elbow to the forehead that Saito did not expect. Fujiwara and Inoki were throwing putrid headbutts. This was late-career Kikuchi without the snarling and brain damage. Inoki gets cut open hardway and the sneer of pure disgust he throws at Fujiwara would shrivel your testes. The match properly kicks up a gear with ten minutes to go, first with an extended Murdoch and Fujiwara segment (Murdoch's elbow drops were some of the best I've ever seen btw), followed by Inoki coming in and decapitating Fujiwara with an enziguri. Fujiwara is maybe the king of selling a surprise KO and this was an incredible bit of selling even for him. Fujiwara in peril is just sensational - his second enziguri sell might've been even better than the first - and Inoki was top drawer revelling in the beatdown. Inoki always had an air of arrogance about him so you can imagine how much fun he had putting the clamps on one of the crowd's favourites. Last few minutes are nice and heated, everyone pushing for the late win, and the Fujiwara-Saito double headbutt on Murdoch is the nearfall of the century. Prolly. This was very fucking badass.

Rematch of their bout from earlier in the month, which is almost certainly the best wrestling match to ever happen on the date of June 9th in any year in history. So a lot to live up to, and it doesn't quite, but I don't think they were going for that anyway and taken on its own it's Choshu v Fujiwara, so you will watch it and you will be glad that you did. It's been a minute since I've watched much Fujiwara from around this period and I'm wondering if he wasn't the best wrestler alive in 1987. He was incredible in this, in much the same way he was incredible in their first match. The man is a menace, unshackled and rampant, constrained by no rules, out to drag Choshu down to his level. Straight away he's throwing wild headbutts and grabbing Choshu by the throat, really forcing him to the mat while we get these close-up camera shots of his fingers clinching Choshu's windpipe. Everything is nasty and uncooperative and all of the strike exchanges are amazing - the slaps, the punches, nothing fancy or pretty, all of it ragged and GRITTY. Awesome bit that Sleeze also mentions, where Choshu backs Fujiwara into the corner and uses his weight to pin him there, then hammers him with back elbows to the head and neck. Every time Choshu does something offensively Fujiwara gets a little more rabid in response, which means the GOAT of crazed grinning facial expressions does a whole lot of crazed grinning, extremely satisfied that he's under Choshu's skin and extremely happy to keep digging further. Everything around the Choshu lariat and Fujiwara armbar was unreal, similar in a lot of ways to their previous match. The first lariat Choshu throws here is one of the best spots I've seen in a wrestling match in forever and I'm dead ass serious. Fujiwara is caving Choshu's head in with amazing Fujiwara headbutts, properly reeling back and clonking him on the forehead while he has Choshu by the hair, then as he rocks back for another Choshu uncorks a lariat and DESTROYS him on the spot. The camera work really amplified it as well, the way it was zoomed in on Fujiwara, anticipating that headbutt to connect, so we never saw the wind-up from Choshu before he took his head off. The way Fujiwara sold each lariat was perfect, not just in the moment but as the lingering effects took hold. There was one brilliant bit of selling where he sort of stumbled out of the corner with glazed over eyes, his entire body language loose like you could tell he wasn't quite right, whereas earlier he was smirking and circling the waters and even the roll of his shoulders looked dangerous. He had that one Fujiwara armbar attempt, but by the second lariat it might've been academic. These two are perfect together and this was another very badass match.

Yeah, I guess this is more of an angle than a match, but if your angle is someone getting launched into a ring post and bleeding everywhere then I'm pretty much sold. Super Strong Machine (in his immaculate blue tracksuit) trips Maeda as he's getting into the ring at the start, rams him into the post a few times, and after about thirty seconds Maeda falls into the ring covered in blood. I mean he has absolutely massacred himself with the blade on this, good grief. Saito tries to put him away immediately with a couple Saito Suplexes and a lariat, but Maeda keeps kicking out with milliseconds to spare and the people are in bits. Maeda gets almost nothing in the way of offence but everything he does do is met with a monster pop. He also takes another three or four ludicrous postings on the floor and the fact Saito had to resort to that for a count out win is maybe a story in itself. Post-match all hell breaks loose and a shirtless Fujiwara runs off the bad bastards, practically by his presence alone. One of a kind.

Cards on the table, I hated this series back during the DVDVR project. Well I hated two of their matches. This one I had just outside my top 60, so I probably didn't hate it but I wouldn't suggest I loved it. But 2009 was a time long ago and what are we (it is merely I, a singular entity) if not open to re-evaluation? Honestly this is a bit of a strange match, at least in terms of structure. It's quite choppy, but that matches the rough execution and overall it adds to the uncooperative feel of it, almost like a pro/shoot style hybrid. Even though they don't necessarily communicate hatred in an overt sense, at least not early, you can tell that they do not like each other one bit and that resonates from start to finish. They're a little tentative to begin, some missed kicks here and there, mostly a feeling out process. There's one moment where they tie up and Koshinaka kind of slaps Takada's hand away, and Takada immediately sells it in a way that tells you there's something to it. Two of the fingers on that hand are taped up and the camera zooms in on it, so you can probably file that one away for later. Neither guy really sustains an advantage early and they do a few "I have you too well scouted" exchanges, but they were fine and the underlying malice behind those exchanges kept them from feeling rote. Like, the part where Takada's spin kick was met with Koshinaka's dropkick worked not just because it conveyed that part of the story ("this is our third singles match so we know each other pretty well"), but because it didn't look like those kicks were intended to do anything other than land on the opponent. Even some of the iffy selling was fine. I don't think either guy is a particularly compelling seller anyway, but this was some fight-through-pain selling that I didn't mind and even the dodgy no-selling parts added to how uncooperative everything felt. The first real example of that was when Koshinaka hit a tombstone and Takada kicked out, got up to his feet and punted Koshinaka right in the head (and even after it he sort of slumped in the ropes as a delayed reaction). Takada has the edge in grappling and he's obviously a better striker, so at points it feels like Koshinaka only has a shot through stubborn determination. There was also a great sense of escalation, the way they'd try and hit moves only for the other to fight them off, then come back to them later once fatigue had kicked in. It happened with the dragon suplex (this was one of the most gorgeous dragon suplexes you'll see btw), some of the submission attempts, even some of the strikes that were being avoided earlier. Towards the end Takada is all in on the crossface chickenwing, then we get that payoff from earlier as Koshinaka tries to snap his fingers. Takada's selling here was awesome and I loved that he looked at Koshinaka like this was beyond the pale even for him. He'd try and circle around Koshinaka with that hand hidden, but any time he'd grab him or come close enough Koshinaka would get to the finger-bending. The bit where he stomped on the hand while bleeding from the mouth made him look like a desperate man who may or may not also be a psychopath. Finish rules, with Koshinaka applying an armbar while bending the fingers at disgusting angles, leaving the fancy kickpad MMA guy no choice but to submit. Those pro wrestling rules are different, brother. This was way the fuck better than I remembered. Maybe watching it in isolation without the stink of their previous matches helped, but either way I thought it was really good. Maybe I've been too harsh on 80s Koshinaka all this time.

This is one of my favourite Fujinami performances ever. Probably one of my favourite Kimura performances as well. I don't know why Kimura was so pissed at his former teammate but he clobbered him before the bell with a taped fist and Fujinami was up against it straight away. I thought Fujinami was amazing in the first half of this, all of it stemming from that opening punch. He can never really mount any offence and has to operate with caution, has to be patient before engaging, backing into the corner, trying to shake the cobwebs loose, clearly still reeling from the sucker punch and trying to just bide his time to get himself right. Kimura being all over him and socking his jaw several more times never did him much good either. There was a great bit where Fujinami managed to grab a nice hammerlock out of a standing switch, and instead of engaging in any of that Kimura just immediately cracked him in the cheek and Fujinami was on the mat staring at the lights. He'd stomp Fujinami while he was curled up in the ropes, punch him in the ear and let everyone know he was doing it, apply every submission with venom, basically he was all over Fujinami like a very angry rash. When Fujinami did manage to take over he absolutely slabbered Kimura like you'd want. He persisted and tried to wrestle this thing clean, but you can only push a man's buttons so many times before he snaps and when he did he tried to split Kimura's skull like a pomegranate. Fujinami punches the cut about a dozen times and you wonder if maybe Kimura should've stopped riling him up with those cheapshots earlier. The finishing run is short and compact and, even though they mostly stop the blatant closed fist punching, manages to capture a sense of escalating violence. That peaked with Kimura bringing a chair into the ring and piledriving Fujinami on top of it, and I guess even in Japan a piledriver on a chair carries some WEIGHT. KinchStalker's background info on the finish makes it even better. A loaded kneepad! In Japan! That boy hated Fujinami so bad he stuck a roll of quarters down his kneepad. How very Memphis. How very badass.

Tenryu v Kawada is such an all-timer of a pairing. It's not one that usually springs to mind when that topic comes up, even when talking about the best match-ups of each individual (Hashimoto is my go-to for Tenryu and it's pretty impossible to separate Kawada from Misawa), but they've been great facing off in a bunch of different environments. When Tenryu returned to All Japan in 2000 they smashed each other to bits on more than one occasion and the October Triple Crown match is one of the best matches of the decade. This was way different - Kawada far from being established at this point - an awesome fiery underdog v superstar tag partner version of their match-up, like something you'd see in the early days of WAR with Kawada as an affluent man's Koki Kitahara. Tenryu's selling and general demeanour was incredible here, from the subtle to the overt. He wasn't out to brutalise his young protégé and even stopped a few centimetres short of slabbering him off a clean break. That was in the first ten seconds. Then Kawada backed him into the corner and showed no such restraint, throwing multiple high kicks that had Tenryu folded in the ropes. The next opportunity Tenryu had to retaliate you knew he did so and I bet Kawada couldn't chew food properly for a week. I love that Kawada just kept coming, though. He wouldn't be deterred and continued rallying with as much violence as he could muster, intent as he must've been in making a point. The way Tenryu sold the beating was basically perfect, in a way that's hard to articulate beyond the standard "he took Kawada's shots like a trooper and bumped big for all of them." I mean he did take them like a trooper and he did bump big for all of them. The early flurry where Kawada hit a string of baseball slide dropkicks that sent Tenryu into the front row was incredible. But it was how he reacted with almost surprise at points, how he maybe never realised just from teaming with Kawada how hard his understudy could actually hit. That Tenryu resorted to the blatant throat-chopping might've happened anyway, because Tenryu is who Tenryu is, but you kind of get the sense Kawada's fire maybe brought it out in him. These were some absolute bastards of throat chops and you could audibly hear Kawada rasping lungfuls of air. There was an amazing bit where Kawada could only hold the bridge on a German suplex for so long because Tenryu had punted him in the spine earlier, and as he writhed around holding his back Tenryu got up and punted him in the spine again. Just a great little match.

Pretty much the perfect WAR v New Japan midcard match. One of the very coolest things about this feud is how nobody ever takes an off night, whether it's a packed out Dome show, a spot show in a thousand-seater venue, or an untelevised house show. Whenever it's WAR v New Japan everybody brings the violence. This was a G1 Climax show headlined by Mutoh v Hase, so it was a card of some relevance. I can only assume the event was taped for television even if the version I watched was a handheld. That said, this was like the fourth match from the top and they had thirteen minutes to work with. Nogami and Iizuka were not a top level team in the company. Tenryu was 44 working middle of the card for the evening and a star of his calibre easily could've coasted at half- or even quarter-pace. The match would've landed regardless, because it's Tenryu bringing one of his pot-bellied wee bastard mates into New Japan to cause a ruckus. But not a single one of them reined anything in and we wound up with something awesome. For not the first time on this here nonsense of a thing I would like to note that Tenryu was the best wrestler on the planet in 1993. Again, this feud always lit a fire under everyone involved in it, but no matter who he was working against, no matter where on the card he was placed, Tenryu was going balls out every match. He was in an absolute STINKER of a mood and good grief did Nogami and Iizuka bear the brunt of it. I'm not sure I've ever seen Tenryu throw more blatant kicks to the eye in one match than he did here. There must've been a thousand, or at least thirty. He would sporadically come in illegally while one of them was crawling around the mat and he'd punt them clean in the face, sometimes twice or thrice. There was an amazing part where Fuyuki had a bloody and battered Iizuka in a camel clutch while Tenryu was laying into Nogami in the corner. You can guess how the last part went and after Tenryu punted him in the spine enough times that Nogami rolled to the floor, Tenryu turned around, noticed Iizuka right there, and casually booted him in the face like "oh it's you again." Nogami and Iizuka were great playing off of it all. They refused to take any of Tenryu's shit and even less of Fuyuki's, the crowd got totally behind them and that spurred them on even more. The heat segment on Iizuka ruled as well, even getting himself a bit of colour for good measure. At one point Nogami could stand no more and came in swinging a chair, and the moment he fully snapped by chopping and kicking and biting Tenryu to the mat was incredible. Fuyuki working as slovenly sidekick in this feud is always great because crowds hate his guts no matter what he does. Iizuka was dead in the water, struggling to even get up to a kneeling position, and Fuyuki dancing around him shadowboxing had that entire building irate. Just the absolute best feud.

Well this ruled like fuck. ROH is hardly the promotion that comes to mind when talking about great squash matches - for obvious reasons - but this is largely an extended squash, and an awesome one at that. I imagine this is the Bryan Danielson people are buzzed about seeing again in AEW. I mean, I mostly checked out of watching WWE a decade ago so there's a lot of WWE Bryan that I haven't seen, but I absolutely do not recall him being allowed to do this to someone at any point in that run. As a babyface he was always the underdog, often a goofy one at that, and even when he got to tap into his mean streak it felt like a fleeting foray into a past life. As a heel he leaned a little further into it, but I don't really remember anything like this. He tortured wee Jack Evans here and never before have I seen someone twisted and contorted into so many ridiculous shapes. Even for an extremely flexible young man this was some real nonsense. At one point Danielson had both of Jack's elbows about touching each other behind his back while his heel was connected to his neck. He put him in the nastiest version of an Argentine backbreaker you've ever seen and then he pretzel'd him with a stump puller from hell. Evans got a few licks in and once or twice mounted some offence, but it was always brief and only drove Danielson to make his life an even greater misery. Evans' bump off the European uppercut was amazing and the Boston Crab at the end is a disgrace. Total blast of a match.

Tenryu was my number 2 in 2016 and I'd expect him to land there again in 2026. There's almost no chance he drops out the top 3 no matter what, and I guess there's always the chance he finishes at the very top. I feel like I've written stupid amounts of words about Tenryu on this board and elsewhere already, and at this point there's not really a whole lot to say about him that hasn't been said by SOMEONE. His longevity is amazing and he's the gold standard for cantankerous old bastards in pro wrestling. He's one of those wrestlers that I'll watch no matter the setting, the opponent, the type of match, and almost always find something to like about his performance. On the surface he doesn't feel like a versatility candidate, because Tenryu is pretty much always Tenryu in the same way Hansen is pretty much always Hansen, but he takes that show on the road in lots of different ways once he becomes fully-formed as a performer. He has the classic precursor to King's Road, he has the lumpy potato-throwing crowbar-fests in WAR, he was perfect at doing inter-promotional wrestling, he was a master of the big spectacle, he did wild barbed wire and tables garbage brawls in an Onita fed - he basically took the Tenryu Show everywhere in Japan from 1989 to 1999 and did it in singles, tags and multi-man matches, ruling in every single environment. As he got older (or EVEN MORE OLDER) in the 00s he leaned further into the grumpiness and brought a sense of hostility to every contest. You could put him in there with a Kawada, a Kobashi, a Kaz Hayashi or a Kazushi Miyamoto and his unquenchable thirst for punching you in the throat would inevitably bubble to the surface. There was nobody better at the random outburst of violence, where he'd either come into the ring unprompted and kick someone in the eye or throw a water bottle at their face from across the ring. He had good matches with every motherfucker in Japan and great ones with a lot of them. If I could only watch one wrestler for the rest of my life, I would pick Tenryu, so, you know, that probably counts for something. And I'm not even close to being on the same side of the fence as folk saying he doesn't have a litany of great matches. I would obviously caveat this by saying my idea of a great match is probably different from most peoples', but I could rattle off 40 that I'd call great without hesitation, a number of them being all-time top 100 level, and there are still a decent handful of his most highly pimped matches that I'm yet to see. He was the man. GENICHIRO TENRYU YOU SHOULD WATCH (or check the Complete & Accurate): v Riki Choshu (JPW, 2/21/85) w/Jumbo Tsuruta v Riki Choshu & Killer Khan (All Japan, 8/2/85) w/Jumbo Tsuruta v Riki Choshu & Yoshiaki Yatsu (All Japan, 1/28/86) v Stan Hansen (All Japan, 3/27/88) w/Toshiaki Kawada v Stan Hansen & Terry Gordy (All Japan, 12/16/88) v Jumbo Tsuruta (All Japan, 6/5/89) w/Stan Hansen v Giant Baba & Rusher Kimura (All Japan, 11/29/89) w/Stan Hansen v Jumbo Tsuruta & Yoshiaki Yatsu (All Japan, 12/6/89) v Hulk Hogan (SWS, 12/12/91) w/Masao Orihara v Koki Kitahara & Great Kabuki (WAR, 7/14/92) v Ric Flair (WAR, 9/15/92) w/Koki Kitahara v Shiro Koshinaka & Kengo Kimura (WAR, 10/23/92) w/Takashi Ishikawa, Ashura Hara, Koki Kitahara & Ricky Fuyuki v Riki Choshu, Tatsumi Fujinami, Hiroshi Hase, Osamu Kido & Takayuki Iizuka (New Japan, 2/16/93) w/Takashi Ishikawa v Shinya Hashimoto & Michiyoshi Ohara (New Japan, 6/14/93) v Shinya Hashimoto (New Japan, 8/8/93) w/Ashura Hara v Atsushi Onita & Tarzan Goto (WAR, 3/2/94) v Nobuhiko Takada (UWFi, 9/11/96) w/Nobutaka Araya v Kazuo Yamazaki & Takayuki Iizuka (WAR, 11/9/96) v Shinya Hashimoto (New Japan, 8/1/98) w/Hiroshi Ono, Ichiro Yaguchi & Shoji Nakamaki v Atsushi Onita, Mitsunobu Kikuzawa, Sambo Asako & Shigeo Okumura (No Rope Barbed Wire Street Fight Tornado Double Hell Match) (Onita Pro, 6/27/99) v Toshiaki Kawada (All Japan, 10/28/00) w/Nobutaka Araya v Taiyo Kea & Kiyoshi Miyamoto (All Japan, 4/27/02) v Katsuyori Shibata (New Japan, 11/13/04) w/Jun Akiyama v Kenta Kobashi & Akira Taue (NOAH, 9/18/05) v Tiger Mask (Real Japan, 3/18/10)

Casas was my number 3 in 2016, but he's my current frontrunner for number 1 next time. He has the incredible longevity. He has the incredible peak, where at his best he was as good as anybody I've ever seen. He has the incredible matches. He has the incredible performances. He can brawl, work the mat, carry a match with his otherworldly presence and charisma. I don't need him to be amazing or the best guy in *every* match he's in -- I've seen him be amazing and the best guy in *enough* matches he's in to be okay putting him number 1. He's in my MOTD for two separate decades, twenty years apart, with one of them being my #1 match of all time, and in a third decade his best match would be around my top 5. The more random 90s CMLL TV that pops up on YouTube his case is only bolstered to me. To Soup's point about him slipping into the background a bit in 2001, well, I can't really argue that because I haven't gone through that stuff and don't know how I would even go about it, but if you asked me to watch every bit of footage from a wrestler who happens to be on a down year then I wouldn't have a problem with doing that with Casas. A phenomenal pro wrestler and right now I'd call him the GOAT. NEGRO CASAS YOU SHOULD WATCH: w/Blue Panther v El Hijo del Santo & Eddie Guerrero (Juarez, 1987) v El Hijo del Santo (Los Angeles, 7/18/87) w/Blue Panther & Fuerza Guerrera v El Hijo del Santo, Yoshinari Asai & Gran Hamada (WWA, 1990) v El Hijo del Santo (WWA, 5/17/91) w/Dr Wagner Jr. & Rambo v Silver King, Gran Hamada & El Texano (UWA, 2/29/92) v El Dandy (CMLL, 7/3/92) w/El Felino & Bestia Salvaje v Ultimo Dragon, Ciclon Ramirez & Oro (CMLL, 3/12/93) v Ultimo Dragon (CMLL, 3/26/93) w/Sangre Chicana & Mocho Cota v Ringo Mendoza, Silver King & Ultimo Dragon (CMLL, 3/4/94) w/El Dandy & Hector Garza v El Hijo del Santo, Bestia Salvaje & Scorpio Jr. (CMLL, 11/29/96) v El Hijo del Santo (CMLL, 9/19/97) w/Mr. Niebla & Atlantis v El Hijo del Santo, Blue Panther & Black Warrior (CMLL, 4/24/98) w/El Hijo del Santo v Bestia Salvaje & Scorpio Jr. (CMLL, 3/19/99) w/El Hijo del Santo v Rey Bucanero & Ultimo Guerrero (CMLL, 11/2/01) v Blue Panther (CMLL, 4/24/11) v Blue Panther (CMLL, 3/2/12) w/Stuka Jr. & Valiente v Virus, Fuego & Vangellys (CMLL, 6/14/13) w/Terrible & Shocker v Rush, Maximo & Rey Escorpion (CMLL, 6/28/13) w/Blue Panther & Atlantis v Negro Navarro, Black Terry & Solar (CMLL, 8/16/13) v Rush (CMLL, 11/22/13) v Titan (CMLL, 1/3/14) w/Barbaro Cavernario & Dragon Lee v Virus, Hechicero & Cachorro (CMLL, 5/23/14) v Dragon Lee (CMLL, 5/22/15) w/Kamaitachi & Gran Guerrero v Dragon Lee, Stuka Jr. & Volador Jr. (CMLL, 2/19/16) v Aramis (Lucha Memes, 3/11/18)

Lawler was my number 4 in 2016 and he'll be around the top 5 again in 2026. "A minimalist's dream," the history books would write. I get where people are coming from when they say they want more STUFF, and I honestly don't say that be snide or sarcastic or whatever. He IS a minimalist and some people prefer the maximalist. He's maybe the best puncher ever (I say maybe because I've watched a bunch of Sangre Chicana lately) and I'm completely fine with that being his primary offensive move, but I know some people would prefer a bit more wrestling. I actually think he's a perfectly fine mat wrestler and it's not like he didn't do actual wrestling moves, but...it is what it is. I love what he does and how he does it and he has a boatload of fucking awesome matches doing it (I could easily have rattled off 50 down below), so that'll get you pretty high on my list. One of the all-time great babyfaces with some of the most immaculate timing you could want, a sneak under-the-radar great - and sometimes huge - bumper, stuuuupid longevity, etc. He's great in singles and great in tags, in the cage, in a barbed wire ring, pulling horse shit or working straight. I actually do, however, buy into the point about him maybe lacking that real proper streak of savage bastardry as a heel. I'm not saying it's a huge thing to me, because I could count on one hand the amount of wrestlers I want to see working as shifty conniving heel more than Lawler, but his peers like Funk and Hansen have those performances where they're rabid insane animals you'd buy trying to stab someone or strangle them with a bull rope. When their backs are against the wall, Bockwinkel, Rose and Flair all have that real vicious streak. With Lawler, I don't really remember seeing it very often (the hair match vs Dundee from '77 is a good example, though). Still, his run as a babyface is so good that it more or less offsets it, to the point where I'm not entirely sure I'll have any Americans above him (only one I had over him last time was Hansen). He might also be The King, if you will, of the match-angle amalgamation. JERRY LAWLER YOU SHOULD WATCH: v Bill Dundee (Memphis, 8/22/77) v Harley Race (Memphis, 12/10/77) v Terry Funk (Memphis, 3/23/81) v Terry Funk (Memphis, 4/6/81) v Dutch Mantell (Memphis, 3/22/82) v Dutch Mantell (Memphis, 3/29/82) v Ric Flair (Memphis, 8/14/82) v Nick Bockwinkel (Memphis, 11/8/82) v Bill Dundee (Memphis, 6/6/83) w/Randy Savage v King Kong Bundy & Rick Rude (Memphis, 9/17/84) v Randy Savage (Memphis, 6/3/85) v Bill Dundee (Memphis, 12/30/85) w/Dutch Mantell v Bill Dundee & Buddy Landel (Memphis, 3/10/86) v Bill Dundee (Memphis, 7/14/86) v Bam Bam Bigelow (Memphis, 9/7/86) w/Bam Bam Bigelow v Austin Idol & Tommy Rich (Memphis, 3/23/87) v Austin Idol (Memphis, 4/27/87) w/Bill Dundee v Original Midnight Express (AWA, 10/30/87) v Curt Hennig (Memphis, 5/9/88) v Tommy Rich (SCW, 10/2/88) v Eric Embry (UWSA, 9/8/89) v The Snowman (USWA, 6/2/90) v Bret Hart (WWF Summerslam, 8/30/93) v Terry Funk (MLW, 8/22/03) v The Miz (WWE Elimination Chamber, 2/20/11)

It feels trite to even say it at this point, as you could say it for almost every single match Rose had in Portland from like 1977-1983, but this was yet another example of maybe the most versatile wrestler ever working a very different match than any he's worked before or after. It's pretty remarkable, and I know it was almost a necessity as he worked the same arena in front of the same crowd every week for nearly six years straight. But still, the creativity is astounding and he was clearly a guy who took immense pride in his craft. This ruled, of course. In a vacuum, taken in context, whatever you like - it was a badass wrestling match. They start real tentatively, or at least Rose does as he really doesn't want to engage in a fight. He backs up, slithers out the ring, slithers in, backs up again, bumps into Sandy Barr who shoves him away, and with every passing second the anticipation builds for him finally being popped in the mouth. Rose takes his first huge bump off a gorilla press slam, which is pretty wild considering the fact he's hardly a cruiserweight, but then Adonis crashes and burns on a missed splash and Buddy goes for the kill. He takes the first fall with a quick string of offence, everything targeted on the midsection, with a big gutbuster, a couple mean double stomps and a roll up. In very Portland fashion that continues into the second fall and I loved Rose staying on the midsection with a fucking stomach claw. That move isn't always the most compelling, but he went after it like he was trying to wring out a dishcloth and Adonis sold it like his spleen was being squished like Plasticine. When Adonis makes his comeback there's a great bit on the floor where Rose tries to run away only to be sunset flipped, and I love Sandy Barr making the count outside the ring just because. He would always do random shit like that and the people always popped huge for it. Adonis taking the return fall with the spinning toe hold bleeds into the third fall and obviously Rose sells the leg like death after hitting the Billy Robinson backbreaker. By the end they both literally try to rip each other's eyeball out and this was some of the nastiest eye-gouging you'll see. Even the DQ finish ruled, with Rose grabbing a pen that someone had chucked at him and stabbing Adonis in the eye with it! I remembered this being awesome and I can happily report I was not wrong.

I had Satanico at number 5 in 2016 and he'll be right around there again in 2026. A word or two has been written about Satanico in this thread already so there's no point in me echoing it, but I want to reiterate just how great Satanico was at portraying the aura of the baddest motherfucker on the planet. I can't think of anybody in history who more believably comes across as a war leader; the sort of commander-in-chief who's out there coordinating beatdowns on the battlefield, who you buy unquestionably as someone whose teammates would follow into hell and back. And he backed it up every time, whether he was brawling or grappling, a rudo or a tecnico. One of the all-time great actors in wrestling. He was my #2 luchador the first time around and I don't see him falling short of that the next time. EL SATANICO YOU SHOULD WATCH: v Sangre Chicana (UWA, 9/24/83) w/MS-1 & Espectro Jr. v Sangre Chicana, Mocho Cota & La Fiera (EMLL, 9/30/83) v Atlantis (EMLL, 1/20/84) v Shiro Koshinaka (EMLL, 7/30/84) w/Espectro Jr. v La Fiera & El Faraon (EMLL, 8/12/84) v Gran Cochisse (EMLL, 9/14/84) v Super Astro (EMLL, 10/26/84) w/Pirata Morgan & MS-1 v El Egipcio, El Faraon & La Fiera (EMLL, 3/29/85) v Sangre Chicana (EMLL, 5/26/89) w/El Dandy v MS-1 & Masakre (EMLL, 8/11/89) w/Salomon Grundy & Super Astro v Jerry Estrada, Pirata Morgan & Emilio Charles Jr. (CMLL, 3/11/90) v Jerry Estrada (CMLL, 3/23/90) w/Sangre Chicana, Fabuloso Blondy v Perro Aguayo, Lizmark & Ringo Mendoza (CMLL, 6/8/90) w/Perro Aguayo & Kung Fu v El Dandy, Atlantis & Ringo Mendoza (CMLL, 10/21/90) v El Dandy (CMLL, 10/26/90) w/MS-1 & Fabuloso Blondy v El Dandy, Sangre Chicana & Ringo Mendoza (CMLL, 11/16/90) v El Dandy (CMLL, 12/14/90) w/Pirata Morgan & MS-1 v Los Brazos (CMLL, 11/22/91) v Pierroth Jr. (CMLL, 92/93?) v Pirata Morgan (AAA, 11/26/93) w/Ultimo Guerrero & Rey Bucanero v Tarzan Boy, Antifaz del Norte & Felino (CMLL, 1/21/00) v Tarzan Boy (CMLL, 2/25/00) w/Averno & Mephisto v Ultimo Guerrero, Tarzan Boy, Rey Bucanero & Mascara Magica (CMLL, 9/28/01) v Blue Panther (Caralucha, 7/25/15) v Hechicero (Lucha Memes, 2/5/18)

Kawada was my number 6 in 2016. He won't be that high next time, but he's someone I think is very good at the pro wrestling despite me being at the point where I don't really love the sort of style he was great at. He had lots of very good matches! He'll be someone's number 1, or perhaps the number 1 of many someones. There's really nothing else I feel like I need to say about the guy. TOSHIAKI KAWADA MATCHES YOU SHOULD WATCH: w/Genichiro Tenryu v Stan Hansen & Terry Gordy (All Japan, 12/16/88) w/Ricky Fuyuki v Can-Am Express (All Japan, 6/5/89) w/Genichiro Tenryu & Ricky Fuyuki v Giant Baba, Rusher Kimura & Masa Fuchi (All Japan, 9/15/89) v Akira Taue (All Japan, 1/15/91) w/Mitsuharu Misawa & Kenta Kobashi v Jumbo Tsuruta, Akira Taue & Masa Fuchi (All Japan, 4/20/91) w/Mitsuharu Misawa v Jumbo Tsuruta & Akira Taue (All Japan, 11/29/91) v Stan Hansen (All Japan, 2/28/93) v Jun Akiyama (All Japan, 7/9/93) w/Akira Taue v Mitsuharu Misawa & Kenta Kobashi (All Japan, 12/3/93) v Steve Williams (All Japan, 4/16/94) w/Akira Taue v Mitsuharu Misawa & Kenta Kobashi (All Japan, 5/21/94) v Mitsuharu Misawa (All Japan, 6/3/94) w/Akira Taue v Mitsuharu Misawa & Kenta Kobashi (All Japan, 6/9/95) v Mitsuharu Misawa (All Japan, 7/24/95) v Gary Albright (All Japan, 10/25/95) w/Akira Taue v Mitsuharu Misawa & Jun Akiyama (All Japan, 12/6/96) v Kenta Kobashi (All Japan, 6/12/98) w/Genichiro Tenryu v Stan Hansen & Taiyo Kea (All Japan, 7/23/00) v Kensuke Sasaki (New Japan, 10/9/00) v Genichiro Tenryu (All Japan, 10/28/00) w/Nobutaka Araya v Genichiro Tenryu & Masa Fuchi (All Japan, 6/30/01) v Naoya Ogawa (Zero-1, 12/14/03) v Shinya Hashimoto (All Japan, 2/22/04) v Katsuyori Shibata (New Japan, 11/3/04) v Satoshi Kojima (All Japan, 2/16/05)

I also had Fujiwara at number 7 in 2016 and he'll be top 10 again in 2026. In terms of wrestlers who worked both shoot style and pro style for semi-lengthy periods of time, he's the best ever. Shit, he might be the best shoot style worker ever and he was amazing at pro style to boot. It's been mentioned, but he's maybe the greatest defensive wrestler ever. Hardly anyone sells the cumulative damage of strikes better, how he'll sell those first shots that are partially blocked while trying to catch and arm or a leg as a counter, how he'll then sell the ones that start getting through his guard, how he'll sell the ones that land flush. I also love that he's a total carny and I'll always appreciate some Fujiwara horse shit. Plus he's like 95 and the last time I saw him he could still go, so he has the longevity and he has the incredible peak. Number 7 might be too low. YOSHIAKI FUJIWARA YOU SHOULD WATCH: w/Antonio Inoki, Tatsumi Fujinami, Nobuhiako Takada & Kengo Kimura v Riki Coshu, Yoshiaki Yatsu, Animal Hamaguchi, Isamu Teranishi & Kuniaki Kobayashi (New Japan, 4/19/84) v Super Tiger (UWF, 12/5/84) v Kazuo Yamazaki (UWF, 1/7/85) v Super Tiger (UWF, 1/16/85) v Super Tiger (UWF, 911/85) v Akira Maeda (New Japan, 1/10/86) v Antonio Inoki (New Japan, 2/6/86) W/Akira Maeda, Osamu Kido, Nobuhiko Takada & Kazuo Yamazaki v Antonio Inoki, Tatsumi Fujinami, Kengo Kimura, Umanosuke Ueda & Kantaro Hoshino (New Japan, 3/26/86) w/Nobuhiko Takada, Osamu Kido, Akira Maeda & Kazuo Yamazaki v Seiji Sakaguchi, Tatsumi Fujinami, Keiichi Yamada, Kengo Kimura & Shiro Koshinaka (New Japan, 5/1/86) v Riki Choshu (New Japan, 6/9/87) w/Masa Saito v Antonio Inoki & Dick Murdoch (New Japan, 12/4/87) w/Tatsumi Fujinami, Keiichi Yamada, Shiro Koshinaka & Kengo Kimura v Hiroshi Saito, Kuniaki Kobayashi, Super Strong Machine, Masa Saito & Riki Chosu (New Japan, 9/12/88) v Kazuo Yamazaki (UWF, 7/24/89) v Akira Maeda (UWF, 2/9/90) v Nobuhiko Takada (UWF, 2/27/90) v Nobuhiko Takada (UWF, 10/25/90) v Masakatsu Funaki (PWFG, 7/26/91) v Minoru Suzuki (PWFG, 11/3/91) v Yusuke Fuke (PWFG, 2/24/92) v Hiroshi Hase (New Japan, 5/3/93) v Shinya Hashimoto (New Japan, 6/1/94) w/Tatsumi Fujinami v Nobuhiko Takada & Masahito Kakihara (UWFi, 6/24/96) w/Shinya Hashimoto v Daisuke Ikeda & Takashi Sugiura (Zero-1, 9/15/01) v Minoru Suzuki (Big Mouth Loud, 3/22/06) v Shinya Aoki (NEW, 4/5/17)

Misawa was my number 8 in 2016, and he'll probably be a bit lower next time but I'm almost certain he'll be my highest of the 90s All Japan crew (unlike in 2016). I really can't be bothered spending a ton of time talking about the Pillars or whatever you want to call them, because it feels like I've been doing that for about 15 years and there are folk here who've been reading about them for even longer. At his best, Misawa was almost untouchable. In the '96 Tag League final, his performance might've been the greatest performance of any wrestler ever, how he portrayed a man who refused to go down while knowing that ultimately it was only a matter of time. He was Spartacus on the battlefield, advancing right until the last. MITSUHARU MISAWA YOU SHOULD WATCH: v La Fiera (All Japan, 8/28/84) w/Jumbo Tsuruta v Genichiro Tenryu & Hiromichi Fuyuki (All Japan, 1/14/90) v Jumbo Tsuruta (All Japan, 6/8/90) v Jumbo Tsuruta (All Japan, 9/1/90) w/Toshiaki Kawada v Jumbo Tsuruta & Akira Taue (All Japan, 9/30/90) w/Toshiaki Kawada & Kenta Kobashi v Jumbo Tsuruta, Masa Fuchi & Akira Taue (All Japan, 4/20/91) w/Toshiaki Kawada & Kenta Kobashi v Jumbo Tsuruta, Masa Fuchi & Akira Taue (All Japan, 5/22/92) v Toshiaki Kawada (All Japan, 3/27/93) v Stan Hansen (All Japan, 5/21/93) w/Kenta Kobashi v Toshiaki Kawada & Akira Taue (All Japan, 12/3/93) w/Kenta Kobashi v Toshiaki Kawada & Akira Taue (All Japan, 5/21/94) v Toshiaki Kawada (All Japan, 6/3/94) v Akira Taue (All Japan, 4/15/95) w/Kenta Kobashi v Toshiaki Kawada & Akira Taue (All Japan, 6/9/95) v Toshiaki Kawada (All Japan, 7/24/95) w/Jun Akiyama v Toshiaki Kawada & Akira Taue (All Japan, 12/6/96) v Kenta Kobashi (All Japan, 1/20/97) w/Jun Akiyama & Satoru Asako vs Toshiaki Kawada, Yoshinari Ogawa & Takao Omori (All Japan, 8/23/98) v Kenta Kobashi (All Japan, 10/31/98) v Toshiaki Kawada (All Japan, 1/22/99) w/Yoshinari Ogawa v Kenta Kobashi & Jun Akiyama (All Japan, 3/6/99) v Jun Akiyama (NOAH, 2/27/00) v Yoshihiro Takayama (NOAH, 9/23/02) w/Kotaro Suzuki v Shinjiro Ohtani & Tatsuhito Takaiwa (NOAH, 3/5/05) v Takeshi Morishima (NOAH, 3/5/06)

Hashimoto was my number 9 in 2016 and he'll be top 10 again in 2026 (I actually thought he landed just outside the top 10 but clearly I was fulla shit). In terms of aura, I'm not sure there's anyone who was more compelling to me personally than Hashimoto. The staredowns, the milking of the big moment, the intensity, the grit. Nobody does "gritting teeth and fighting through the pain" better than Hashimoto, which routinely makes his strike exchanges amazing rather than rote (is this the part where the old folks yelling at clouds say nobody knows how to do strike exchanges anymore?). OJ has written has awesome stuff about Hashimoto before, about how he was a samurai, how he had bushido, and I love that because the guy just embodies all that cool shit about being a warrior. He would stand against the tide with nothing more than his honour and his conviction. Is it any fucking wonder the people embraced him? A truly wonderful pro wrestler. SHINYA HASHIMOTO YOU SHOULD WATCH: v Victor Zangiev (New Japan, 4/24/89) v Vader (4/24/89) v Masa Chono (New Japan, 8/11/91) w/Michiyoshi Ohara v Ashura Hara & Hiromichi Fuyuki (WAR, 3/7/93) w/Riki Choshu v Genichiro Tenryu & Takashi Ishikawa (WAR, 4/2/93) w/Michiyoshi Ohara v Genichiro Tenryu & Takashi Ishikawa (New Japan, 6/14/93) v Genichiro Tenryu (WAR, 6/17/93) v Genichiro Tenryu (New Japan, 8/8/93) v Riki Choshu (New Japan, 6/15/94) v Hiroshi Hase (New Japan, 12/13/94) v Kensuke Sasaki (New Japan, 1/4/95) v Steven Regal (New Japan, 4/16/95) w/Junji Hirata v Masa Chono & Hiroyoshi Tenzan (New Japan, 6/12/95) v Nobuhiko Takada (New Japan, 4/29/96) v Riki Choshu (New Japan, 8/2/96) v Tatsumi Fujinami (New Japan, 6/5/98) v Genichiro Tenryu (New Japan, 8/1/98) v Satoshi Kojima (New Japan, 8/2/98) v Kazuo Yamazaki (New Japan, 8/2/98) w/Takayuki Iizuka v Naoya Ogawa & Kazunari Murakami (New Japan, 1/4/00) v Naoya Ogawa (New Japan, 4/7/00) w/Yuji Nagata v Mitsuharu Misawa & Jun Akiyama (Zero-1, 3/2/01) w/Naoya Ogawa v Hiroyoshi Tenzan & Scott Norton (New Japan, 5/2/02) v Masato Tanaka (Zero-1, 11/7/03) v Toshiaki Kawada (All Japan, 2/22/04)

I had Buddy at number 10 in 2016 and there's a decent chance he lands there again in 2026. There have been three extensive cases made for Buddy in this thread - or at least three extensions of the same case made brilliantly - so I don't really have anything else to add about him as a candidate that wouldn't just be retreading ground. The point about his true greatness coming through best by watching him week to week is right on the money, but taking that sort of deep dive into a wrestler isn't something everyone will want or even be able to do. The good thing at least is that he has the matches that you can throw on whenever and those makes a pretty fucking decent case for him anyway. One of the most versatile wrestlers ever and one of those "I'll watch them in any setting" folks. Like, I watched a WWF TV match the other week where he was against SD Jones. It was a five minute studio match and he took two absolutely wild bumps, one of them being the best upside down corner bump I've ever seen (where he flew all the way out the ring and landed on the concrete). He had no reason to bump like that for SD Jones in a five minute studio match. In Portland I don't think I've seen a Buddy match that isn't worth watching and it doesn't matter if he was wrestling Roddy Piper or Rick Martel or Cocoa Samoa. The coolest thing is I still haven't seen a decent chunk of his Portland stuff. I guess he has a relatively short run as an all-timer, but to me there's enough there to go on and I think there's a good case for him being the best wrestler in the world during at least three of the years we have footage of. BUDDY ROSE YOU SHOULD WATCH: v Lonnie Mayne (Portland, 10/1/77) w/Ed Wiskowski, Roddy Piper & Killer Brooks v Adrian Adonis, Ron Starr, George Wells & Hector Guerrero (Portland, 4/7/79) v Hector Guerrero (Portland, 4/14/79) v Roddy Piper (Portland, 5/12/79) v Johnny Eagles (Portland, 5/26/79) v Killer Brooks (Portland, 6/2/79) v Adrian Adonis (Portland, 8/31/79) w/The Sheepherders v Sam Oliver Bass, Roddy Piper & Red Bastien (Portland, 10/27/79) v Rick Martel (Portland, 4/26/80) v Rick Martel (Portland, 5/10/80) w/Ed Wiskowski v Rick Martel & Roddy Piper (Portland, 8/2/80) v Jay Youngblood (Portland, 1/3/81) w/Rip Oliver v Roddy Piper & Steven Regal (Portland, 6/20/81) v Bob Backlund (WWF, 8/30/82) v Pedro Morales (WWF, 11/22/82) v Bob Backlund (WWF, 11/25/82) v Chris Adams (Portland, 2/26/83) w/Roddy Piper & Hack Sawyer v Ed Wiskowski, The Assassin & Rip Oliver (Portland, 3/17/84) w/Doug Somers v Leon White & Jesse Hernandez (AWA, 5/1/86) w/Doug Somers & Alexis Smirnoff v Midnight Rockers & Curt Hennig (AWA, 6/28/86) w/Doug Somers v Midnight Rockers (AWA, 8/30/86) v Marty Jannetty (AWA, 10/18/86) w/Doug Somers & Sherri Martel v Midnight Rockers & Despina Montegues (AWA, 11/27/86) w/Doug Somers v Midnight Rockers (AWA, 12/25/86) w/Doug Somers v Midnight Rockers (AWA, 1/17/87)