GWE 2026 Reaction Thread

[Jetlag]

Masanobu Kurisu ending up this high is kind of amazing for a cult hero who never really had an extended run of main events or anything safe for a minute in FMW in 1990.

[HowtobeaMark]

How high are we going to get Toni Storm?

[Ricky Jackson]

I'm kinda shocked Superstar Graham or The Sheik haven't dropped yet

Or Bobby Heenan 

Love it

[Matt D]

10 minutes ago, Ricky Jackson said:

I'm kinda shocked Superstar Graham or The Sheik haven't dropped yet

Or Bobby Heenan 

Love it

Very curious about Graham. There are people who went in on star power and their own criteria. Elliott argued strongly for 70s Graham in the last ten years. I think "aura" is far more important than it was ten years ago for various reasons, including how younger fans see wrestling (and all media) through a lens of anime.

[Tawren]

Edited to say that it's cool that Jeff Lynch is still around. Cool.

[Kadaveri]

I didn't vote for her but I'm happy to see KAORU at #330 rather than totally missing the list like last time. Seems about fair. She was one of my favourites when I first saw GAEA Japan, mainly because I thought she must be legitimately insane. 

[Jetlag]

1 hour ago, Tawren said:

Wait, Lynch is still selling stuff (digital versions)? Where?

He can still be contacted by email which is ( I think)  the same as it always was.

[Makai Club #1]

Dragon Kid sighting. Another Dragon Gate wrestler who has retained almost insane consistency over years since 1999. He's 50 now, if you can believe it and can still fly around with great ease. Had him 62. Could've been higher tbf 

[ohtani's jacket]

Kikuchi? That's indefensible. Masa Saito too. 

Iron Sheik and New Jack side by side amuses me.

 

 

[ohtani's jacket]

How did La Fiera get on so many ballots? 

[Kadaveri]

Not that my ballot would have made much difference, but I will publicly confess that I didn't vote for Kikuchi simply because I forgot about him. He should have been in the 50-75 range. He's the best "undersized babyface struggling to make the hot tag" guy ever.

[Control21]

Sakuraba falling so much makes me sad.

 

Kohsaka finishing higher than he did in 2016 is pretty awesome, though.

[El-P]

Speedball Mike Bailey. Oh, you lovable non-binary mullet wearing bare-feet kicking québécois. Easily one of my very top favorites of the last few years, dating back from the TNA days. AWESOME pro-wrestler and for all intents and purposes, an awesome human being. But really now, only 7% of the ballots ? 

7% as in... New Jack ? NEW JACK ? Jerome NEW JACK Young ? Are you fucking kidding me ? The one thing New Jack has is that he and I share the same first name. I do not condone the cutting off forehead with x-acto knifes nor throwing people off scaffolds to injure them on purpose. (although *some* people actually deserve it for behaving like really fucking garbage human beings, ya know) But come on now. And I actually think New Jack before he was completely shot physically was a decent worker. The Dark Side episode is a classic.

But hey, this is completely whacked out already. 

DDP. I loved DDP. I actually did DDP Yoga for a few years, so I listened to DDP's voice more than anyone probably would want to. And it was indeed working great. But at some point, ya know... Still got a lot out of it.

Ayako. I saw her debut at 17 years old. The LCO vs HamaKINO match is still probably considered a classic in term of bloodletting with two great rookies. She had a fun stint in TNA too, how odd in retrospect. And she carried chemicals in her bag one too many times apparently.

Chris Sabin. Probably better than 70% of the people coming up. Super influential tag worker. Come to AEW, all his forgotten.

Speaking of which... Rey Fénix. Oh, the irony. Better babyface in LU than Ricochet under a hood. Awesome, AWESOME flyer. Dumb as fuck in term of PR apparently. 

[NotJayTabb]

As the 2016 high voter for both Fritz and Kevin von Erich, it's nice to see other people voting them even higher, with Fritz improving on his 2016 placing. He feels like a guy who'd be much higher if we had more prime footage, but he's great in everything I've seen

[highflyflow]

Two of my guys officially off the board with Tsuyoshi Kikuchi (98) and La Fiera (96). Hurts!

[cad]

La Fiera died today. I used to have Fiera as my avatar, two Fieras actually, before switching to Ciclon Ramirez pointing to his sound system. Glad I could honor all three of them with a high vote.

Luchadores who have leapfrogged him from 2016 seem to be Hechicero, Ultimo Guerrero, Mistico, MS-1, Rush, Wagner, Brazo de Plata and Perro Junior. Only fourteen Mexican workers finished ahead of him last time, and all fourteen are still on the board as best as I can tell. Wouldn't call this a successful round of voting for him by any means. I guess his high vote was higher this time.

[ohtani's jacket]

It's questionable to me whether La Fiera is better than several of the luchadores he finished ahead of. Maybe if we had more of his prime. 

[cad]

Like who?

I'm not even sure when Fiera's prime is supposed to have been.

[Boss Rock]

Kikuchi is my third to fall. I almost forgot about him in the latter months of developing my ballot and I'm so glad I didn't. Dude ruled as a fiery face in peril.

[ohtani's jacket]

I'm not sure I'd put him over Bestia, Emilio, Esp

13 minutes ago, cad said:

Like who?

I'm not even sure when Fiera's prime is supposed to have been.

I'm trying to think how he separates himself from the Bestia. Emilio, Espanto Jr and Jerry Estrada pack. I guess he could work tecnico and rudo, which is a plus. His prime was clearly in the 80s. He was broken down in the 90s. Still a good worker, but from the glimpses we have of him when he was younger, his ceiling was higher. Maybe I'm overstating his potential, but he felt like he was going to be a headline star early on. 

[DMJ]

Surprised I wasn't the high vote on DDP this time around (I had him at #67). When people talk about the best "TV workers" from the Monday Night Wars on, DDP should make everyone's shortlist. You could give him 5 minutes, 8 minutes, 10 minutes...and he made them count against a very wide variety of opponents, some of whom were absolute stiffs or were well past their prime. Also, the knocks against him "scripting" his matches seems silly to me in 2026 when its fairly clear that many top performers script their matches and have been doing so for years (Jericho included a rundown of his Mania match against Punk in one of his books, for example). Scripted or not, Page would often put creative twists and transitions into his matches that felt organic. 

Anyway, I guess I'll have to change my avatar.

I also had Rhea Ripley on my list and am surprised I wasn't the high for her either (I had her at #74). It's a shame we'll probably never see this fully-formed, "peak" version of her anywhere but the WWE, but I can overlook that and say she's been the best female "ace" the WWE has ever had. She didn't shatter the glass ceiling like Becky did, but she's better in-ring. More consistent than Charlotte and more versatile as a heel/face. I ranked Mercedes Mone higher (as well as other women), but I don't think any could carry the division the way Rhea did/has as the "face of the company" (which I do think is fair to consider). She checked a lot of boxes when I went through my ranking system.
 

[Tetsujin]

Rhea is interesting because she's pretty good and if she leaves WWE and goes to Japan she would hit an awesome peak, I'm sure, but she's still so young and has only been adding to her case since 2023 more or less (and it's not like WWE lets you have the biggest output to begin with), so her getting some votes, and a top 10 one even, feels crazy to me.

[Garbage]

I'm not sure I actually think Fiera is a better worker than Emilio or Bestia myself despite voting for him and not them, but I did watch a bunch of Fiera before the deadline and came away thinking he had a good resume of 90s singles matches.

[Tetsujin]

OMG Kikuchi dropped already? That's sad. I asume most of the 100s will be WWE guys, and those "almost-in-the-list" (*) kind of wrestlers are getting pushed down a lot of spots.

 

(*)Edit: wow, and right now Wahoo, Yamazaki and Fuerza fell as well. Yeap.

[El Dragon]

I both knew this was around the time Larry Z would fall and was not prepaired for it. First of my top 50