Best worker of the last 20 years

[joeg]

I've been thinking the past few months, who is the greatest worker of the 2000s so far? As much as we like to gripe about modern wrestling, there have been some fabulous workers so far this century. I would assume Daniel Bryan would be the run away pick. But there's also LA Park, AJ Styles, Jun Akiyama, Rey Mysterio, etc, etc, the list goes on and on. So who's your pick?

[El-P]

If you consider the entire last 20 years, Hiroshi Tanahashi, probably. AJ Styles and Daniel Bryan probably follow despite most of their career spent in poor environments (TNA, WWE). Okada & Omega really are 2010's guys (thus far), much like Kobashi and Angle were mostly 00's guy (and 90's for Kobashi, obviously).

[MoS]

Hard to look past Daniel Bryan imo. He's been great since 2002 and retirement aside, has been churning out great stuff every year since then. 

Someone more knowledgeable about lucha than myself can list contender(s) from there. 

[KawadaSmile]

Don't think there's anyone in this specific period of time that's better than Daniel Bryan.

[Stiva]

I wouldn’t call WWE a poor environment for Bryan. He didn’t necessarily have the freedom he would on the indies but he got to have long, varied matches with just about everyone on the roster you’d want him to, complete with both an all-time face run (2013-14) and heel run (18-19)

[NotJayTabb]

Yeah, Bryan runs away with this one pretty easily i think. He's a serious GOAT contender, and his career fits perfectly into the past 20 years - none of his best matches fall outside that time frame and he's been active for all of it, bar the injury and temporary retirement. 

[Laz]

It'll come down to Bryan and AJ, really. Styles always gets overlooked when compared to Bryan but, for my money's worth, his average match was better than Bryan's, but Bryan's best stuff was genre-defining.

[Badlittlekitten]

Bryan all the way. His recent WWE heel run cements it for me. I agree with Stiva, the WWE environment hasn't been poor for him at all. He transcends it.

[NintendoLogic]

Tanahashi absolutely has to be in the conversation unless you're completely allergic to modern New Japan.

Strongly disagree with WWE being a poor environment for Bryan. In fact, I think he's been far better in WWE than he was in ROH. Most of his indy work leaves me rather cold, truth be told.

[El-P]

Well, WWE is a poor environment in essence to me. So yeah, Bryan transcended it because he's just that good but there was no other mainstream US promotion at the time, sadly. But still, AJ Styles at least got that peak work in NJPW while we'll never have that kind of stuff for Bryan because of context, and it's too damn bad. On the other hand, tons of AJ Styles great stuff is basically forgotten because it happened in TNA.

Tanahashi was not only the best, but he also anchored and saved his promotion and got it back to the N°2 promotion in the world spot.

As far as lucha libre goes, I dunno, Ultimo Guerrero maybe ?

[kas]

Bryan or Tanahashi. Styles, Hero, and Mochizuki are the closest to them.

[MoS]

I haven't seen a lot of Tana's 2000s work. What are the matches that show where/how he was as a worker back then?

[DMJ]

As a WWE-centric fan, I'm totally comfy with my view being incredibly narrow and limited but because this is pro-wrestling we're talking about, I'm also comfortable living in that ignorance.

So, with that disclaimer, I'm going to say Daniel Bryan by a country mile, then probably Styles, and then, by another mile or so, John Cena. 

I'm curious, especially from the perspective of those more knowledgable and worldly than me, if instead just picking your number 1 and having to expand it to 5 or 10, where would Cena rank?

There was a time when I may have gone with Lesnar above Cena, but Lesnar's worst matches are worse than Cena's worst, in my opinion. With Cena, you could always count on at least some sort of effort. Lesnar, on the other hand, has matches where he clearly doesn't give a shit and those are too much of an insult to the audience for me to overlook them.

[MoS]

As far as modern NJ, I love Okada, but Tanahashi leaves me cold and completely unimpressed. He has been over and a star for a really long time and I respect that, but his 2010s work is very underwhelming. I started really liking Okada when NJ moved on from Tana-Okada. 

[kas]

The Tanahashi Vs Nagata series in 2007 was excellent. The Goto match in 2007 is probably gotos best ever match. His matches against Nakamura in 2008 are awesome. He had a good cc run in 2008 with decent matches against Muto and Kawada, before an incredible final against SUWAMA that is one the best matches of his career. Had some great stuff in 2009 against Angle, Muto, Nakanishi, Nakamura, and Masato Tanaka. His 2010-11 stuff is also really amazing, with the Nagata, Nakamura, Goto, Naito, and Kojima matches all shining.

[NintendoLogic]

He also had a really dope match with Giant Bernard in 2006.

[sek69]

4 hours ago, El-P said:

As far as lucha libre goes, I dunno, Ultimo Guerrero maybe ?

I would say this is a good choice. Dude's been at or near the top for 20+ years and still brings it every time. He has every reason to coast (legend status, on the booking team) but still delivers on a regular basis. 

[Phil Schneider]

I think Black Terry is a good pick for a lucha rep. 

[Matt D]

Virus is right there. And Casas too, though he's obviously slowed down the last couple of years, but he was still delivering high end stuff on a weekly basis until what, 2018? 

[ohtani's jacket]

Yuki Ishikawa. 

[Boss Rock]

1. Daniel Bryan
2. A.J. Styles
3. Hiroshi Tanahashi

[SmartMark15]

Gonna just chime in to say it's probably Daniel Bryan by a pretty wide margin for me. No one really built up the level of quality he did across incredibly varied settings and roles and pretty consistently so over an eighteen year period. He's the greatest to ever do it.

[C.S.]

Daniel Bryan by a mile.

AJ's WWE run has been good but overrated and filled with more misses than hits. Plus, he's a flat-earther. 

 

 

[Jmare007]

Yeah, Bryan takes this. It's pretty ridiculous how quickly he was awesome and then he basically never stopped. Even a guy like Tanahashi took like 6-7 years to really blossom (in 10 years it will be crazy for new fans to find out they had a match against each other) and I have too big of a blind spot with AJ's TNA work.

 

 

[El Dragon]

With respect to the New Japan fans: It's Bryan and it isn't close. He's been a contender for best in the world for basically every year he's been active. I think you can make a claim he's in "best ever" category and I don't think it's hard.

 

Some names that would be in a top 10 discussion that haven't been brought up yet, mostly from US.

Rey Mysterio: While it seems like he's clearly done as a top line guy this minute, he was having good stuff with Andrade, what, last year? Was probably the only guy in the discussion with Bryan in the US for most of the 2000-2010 era. And has still produced very well in times since. It's weird how his name doesn't get mentioned when he was such a stalwart for so long.

Chris Hero: I'm not even a big Hero guy, but I'm surprised some others haven't thrown his name in the running yet. I would guess the failed WWE runs have hurt him in a lot of eyes.

Jun Akiyama: Maybe I'm just super out on New Japan, but he'd still be my "best guy in Japan" for this century so far. 

 

Another name I'd give a shout to being a super Darkhorse, though obviously not a winner in this contest, is Eddie Kingston, who has remained one of the few guys I will seek out there work for almost 15 years now.