Rookies clearly better than Senka Akatsuki

[Jetlag]

Talking about workers in the first year of their career, I am struggling to think of many wrestlers that were as good as Senka Akatsuki straight out of the gate. Within a year she's had several unique, engaging and great matches and looked close to up there even against the likes of Chihiro Hashimoto despite her still limited moveset. Single handedly made the pinfall into a finisher in 2025, her match against Aja made a modern wrestling crowd flip out for an attempted pinfall in 2025 which is no easy feet.

Caveats:

- she got a monster push right out of the gate and getting to work with many highly experienced top workers throughout the year.

- she still looks pretty green in some matches although not much considering how little experience she actually has.

Clearly better:

- Volk Han and other shootstyle freak outliers that were producing greatness right away. No shame in being worse than Volk Han though.

- Carl Greco. Producing shootstyle clinics from the go.

- Ali Najima & Yuta Oya. Great matches on a weekly basis in the first year of their career, in Oyas case even before he made his official debut.

Comparable:

- Jun Akiyama. The default choice when it comes to discussions of 'greatest rookies'. In his first year though? I think he had that Kawada match right?

- Ikuto Hidaka. Did a lot of pretty high end stuff already in his first year as a wrestler.

- Mika Akino. Seems like the obvious comparison considering she had a pretty great big title match against Yoshida just about 6 months into her career, although that may be a Yoshida creation. Also had that all timer bloodbath against LCO a little over a year into wrestling.

- Ayako Hamada. Similiar case as Akino. The 98 ZION final against Yoshida was like her 7th match ever which is downright insane. Again, maybe all on Yoshida though but let's not discredit Ayako, she was incredibly fun from the go.

- Yujiro Yamamoto: Great from the go pretty much. The Otsuka match is his 10th match ever and smokes most wrestlers entire resume.

- Yuki Ishikawa. Pretty much all the BattlARTS guys were good-great as soon as they stepped on the mat, though I am not sure Yuki Ishikawa has had a really great match before the Duane Kosloski match which came a bit over a year into his career.

- Meiko Satomura & the GAEA girls. I know they let Satomura have a singles against Toshiyo Yamada in her first year that was pretty insane, the others may be spotty. I recall the likes of Chihiro Nakano and Maiko Matsumoto doing some great stuff like 6 months into their careers though.

- Jushin Liger. I am not sure how much of his rookie year is on tape but he had that match with Shunji Kosugi that was pretty damn great. The Fujiwara match was also just a bit over a year in his wrestling career.

- Hiroshi Itakura. Based on the 2 matches of his... he was pretty great.

 

[Grimmas]

Seri Yamaoka, who is around right now is better imo.

[Ma Stump Puller]

Akiyama's first year (he debuted in 1992, but he was only around for the last 3 months so we can't really count that as a "year") had him in prominent singles against Steve Williams, Kawada, DiBiase, Kobashi x2, then a bunch of tags. In all of them he's pretty solid and I think despite not being near the quality he would be he holds his own there. I'd say he did better than Senka though it's not as far apart as you may imagine. I put her relatively high on my VP100 list for this year and she ended up 85th overall, which for someone who just debuted is fairly insane.

Tamura only wrestled a couple of times in his first year but he was already pretty fucking good, maybe over Senka in terms of quality. Hashimoto we have very little of for his first two years but he was pretty much already great and the matches we do have show him way above his class as a finished product.