All Japan Excite Series #16

[Childs]

I made a concerted effort to watch a lot of Akiyama from the last seven or eight years for this project. The weird thing is I was extremely impressed with his work during that period but won't end up ranking him much higher than I expected coming in. What that means, basically, is that the 20 or so guys above him (including Kawada, Kobashi, Misawa and probably Taue) were really fucking great.

 

That said, he's a completely reasonable top 10 or even top 5 pick, especially if you emphasize longevity and the ability to remain great under sub-optimal circumstances. I imagine he might have done even better under BIGLAV if Parv had had time to check out his post-2000 work.