GWE 2026 Reaction Thread

[El-P]

2 hours ago, El McKell said:

In a world where AEW never existed of course Kenny Omega, Samoa Joe, Kazuchika Okada, Young Bucks & Will Ospreay all make the top 100.

This.

[Matt D]

1 hour ago, El McKell said:

Gordy and Williams both in the top 150, Miracle Violence is alive and well in 2026 

I think some of this is on the younger crowd responding well to “aura.” That has something to do with Sid’s showing for instance, maybe.

[El-P]

5 minutes ago, Matt D said:

I think some of this is on the younger crowd responding well to “aura.” 

I'm not quite sure Terry Gordy really fit what "aura" is. The guy was a lot of thing (a great worker for one), but aura farming wasn't really one of them.

The fact Mariko Yoshida still hasn't dropped is quite amazing, because her case is mostly 3 years in ARSION. If I was right about anything back then it was certainly Mariko Yoshida. I'm the patient zero, thank you very much.

[gungan]

This could just be a reflection of the algorithms I'm caught in, but RVD gaining spots isn't that much of a surprise. Fans who came up in the 2000s tend to like him a fair bit and younger fans seem to really like ECW when they go back and watch it.

[El Dragon]

I was going to make a large multi-paragraph essay about how some of this "These AEW fans are ruining everything" point is silly, but I'll just simply say this: By my count, there are 26 wrestlers (Matt forgot Ishii) who have contributed to their case in AEW at some point in the last half decade that made the top 200. Out of those workers, I would say, maybe, at most, 8 of them are actually AEW first cases.

Six of them (Jericho, Claudio, Danielson, Joe, Punk, and Dustin) made the 2016 list, so they are disqualified because if they made this version of the list before AEW ever existed. New Japan is the primary case for Okada, Omega, Ospreay, Ishii, and Shibata. Christian and Mercedes primary case is obviously there WWE work with other projects tossed in, Rush's best claim to fame is much more his 10 years in CMLL, Sting is god damned Sting, and all of Roddy, Mark, PAC and Kingston have basically been everywhere working long 20 year careers with great work all over the shop. 

So, taking out clearly the non AEW primary cases, you get some mixed bag cases like Moxley, The Bucks, and Toni Storm, and while AEW work is a big part of their case, they had cases well before AEW started. So, more reasonably, you end up with: Swerve Strickland, MJF, Adam Page, and Darby Allin as the 4 guys who I would say are real AEW cases. Swerve and MJF didn't make the top 150, and I frankly find nothing wrong with their landing spots: Swerve is possibly a little high but he's actually been in major companies between LU and WWE for the vast majority of 12 years, it's not like there isn't footage of him, and MJF has some awesome ceilings. But still it didn't push them into making the list. And, honestly, maybe I'll be proven wrong here, but I don't think Page is making the list either. Just can't see a world were he's 60 something spots ahead of MJF. So all of this griping all because Darby Allin is probably making the top 100, when he's already established himself as one of the better TV workers in recent memory (Admittedly by working every match like it's Wrestlemania, but still) That feels absolutely silly to me.

 

I will also note the idea that "We were more backward leaning in 2016, thus our list is better" is also at least partially just not wanting to admit something that I thought was fairly obvious about the 2016 list: It's not all about being backward leaning, it was the voter base also pretty massively let nostalgia cloud their judgement.

Reel used Pillman as an example of a worker who fell, and trying to find a reason for it, when the obvious one was right in front of him: Pillman getting all the way to 72 in 2016 (A rating I've generally held as one of the most confusing in 2016) was just simply way too high. I like Brian Pillman, he was a damn good worker.... for about 4-5 years, at maximum. He was influential, sure, but it's a short peak, and the peak wasn't even that crazy high, he wasn't pulling a Hokuto or something. But still, he got to 72 when a wrestler like Low-Ki, for example had a longer prime already by 2016, and hit higher highs by that point missed the top 100 completely. But nostalgia clouds all judgement, and always will. Pretending otherwise is silly.

 

But that is also why it's going to be hard to have a lot of the old names not get beaten out by new ones as they come in. Because the younger voters, even their ones in their 20's, are also nostalgic for the guys they grew up with. Hell, I'm 37, voted in the last GWE, and I'm incredibly nostalgic for my viewing experiences as a kid, attending my first major shows that will stick with me forever. But the problem is? The guys who I went to see on those shows are still good now. The vast majority of the "modern" candidates that are doing well here have 15 damn years of really good tape. I'm not a Bucks fan, but if you are one, you can easily say "They've been a great tag team for 18 years" and have the footage to back it up. I'm hoping Roderick Strong makes the list, and a big part of that is I think he's been a great worker (With a rough year or two thrown in) since literally 2005. So the younger fans feel nostalgia for the workers who are not only still around, but still really good.

 

Basically, I think the "the young vote are pushing way too many names whose cases aren't made yet" thing just straight up doesn't hold water. I think it barely held water in 2016 for a lot of these guys, and it's outright silly now.

 

 

Well look at that, I had some paragraphs written after all.

 

[El Dragon]

Also, Please note, that isn't a justification for the voting itself. RVD beating out Alexander Otsuka is borderline war crime. 

[FuTen]

This is my first post on this forum. Unfortunately I missed this poll that I had been waiting for for around 5-6 years because of things like the war and the internet outages that have been happening since the start of the year. It’s fine though, if I’m still around I’ll participate in 2036

I’ve known about GWE for a few years now, even before it started getting promoted on X, and I already knew this community back then. What always made this place interesting to me was that people actually talked about wrestling tastes and wrestlers here. If someone didn’t like a wrestler they explained why, and if someone liked them they explained their reasons too. Both sides usually came from people who had actually watched those wrestlers enough to really talk about them.

Honestly I don’t think that’s fully the case with this poll anymore. There are some opinions today that have become really widespread, like Shawn Michaels not being a good wrestler. I’m not even saying I completely disagree with that opinion myself, but when something becomes this common in certain circles it makes me wonder how many people actually believe it and how many just want to believe it. The reason I say that is because when you look at some of those people’s discussions or lists, they praise wrestlers who are actually very similar to the wrestlers they claim to dislike. So it’s pretty obvious that a lot of people are influenced by negative narratives around certain wrestlers.

You can still clearly see different tastes in the poll though. The fact that Tam Nakano and MJF ended up at number one shows that pretty well. There’s nothing wrong with that, more people are participating in the poll now after all. But I do think it removes a certain overall identity these lists used to have. These lists might seem unimportant, but for some people they can become a roadmap for watching wrestling. That was the case for me. I started watching some wrestlers because I saw their names on lists like these. I discovered British wrestling that way and I found Luchadors I didn’t even know about before.

I still respect this kind of variety more than people putting wrestlers on their lists just because of hype without watching them enough to form their own opinion. The reason I think that is because I’ve seen some wrestlers rank really high on certain lists even though just a few years ago people barely talked about them at all. Then after people like Elliot started promoting them heavily on Twitter over the last couple of years, suddenly they started getting called some of the greatest wrestlers ever. I just hope the people putting those wrestlers on their lists have actually watched enough of them to form their own opinions.

Anyway, I hope people keep discussing wrestling on this forum and on their blogs, especially the people who participated in the 2006 poll. Organized forums like this have way more permanence than platforms like X, Discord, and places like that.
 

[Matt D]

Also to clarify, I wasn't knocking the AEW guys for being AEW guys. I just was trying to classify because I thought it was interesting and I was trying to sort out the rest of the list. It's actually because I'm far more interested in AEW than 2010s NJPW that I went that route and didn't name the remaining 2010s NJPW guys instead. Didn't necessarily mean to cause a ripple here. 

Now I have varying feelings about those wrestlers (For instance, I think Adam Page has TERRIBLE instincts re: match layout and only figured things out in the last couple of years with the heel turn, so it would be a peak case. I love how he works to the crowd in a way that almost no one else in the company does. I think those bad instincts can still crop up in PPV matches that go long, so I probably don't think he should be a top 100 wrestler of all time). But I can at least see the case for most of them. I certainly see the case for a guy like PAC with his longevity and relative versatility, even if he's not someone I'd have considered. 

[NotJayTabb]

35 minutes ago, El-P said:

I'm not quite sure Terry Gordy really fit what "aura" is. The guy was a lot of thing (a great worker for one), but aura farming wasn't really one of them.

I wouldn't say Gordy has aura, but the MVC as a unit do

[El Dragon]

3 minutes ago, Matt D said:

Also to clarify, I wasn't knocking the AEW guys for being AEW guys. I just was trying to classify because I thought it was interesting and I was trying to sort out the rest of the list. It's actually because I'm far more interested in AEW than 2010s NJPW that I went that route and didn't name the remaining 2010s NJPW guys instead. Didn't necessarily mean to cause a ripple here. 

Now I have varying feelings about those wrestlers (For instance, I think Adam Page has TERRIBLE instincts re: match layout and only figured things out in the last couple of years with the heel turn, so it would be a peak case. I love how he works to the crowd in a way that almost no one else in the company does. I think those bad instincts can still crop up in PPV matches that go long, so I probably don't think he should be a top 100 wrestler of all time). But I can at least see the case for most of them. I certainly see the case for a guy like PAC with his longevity and relative versatility, even if he's not someone I'd have considered. 

Oh, it wasn't aimed at you at all, I thought your observation was pretty clearly just that, was just using your list as a means of explaining why I thought the case didn't hold water.

 

I also don't think Hangman should be top 100 yet by any means, nor did I vote for him. I did vote PAC, but I don't think a 98 vote probably changed too much for him.

[El-P]

3 minutes ago, gungan said:

This could just be a reflection of the algorithms I'm caught in, but RVD gaining spots isn't that much of a surprise. Fans who came up in the 2000s tend to like him a fair bit and younger fans seem to really like ECW when they go back and watch it.

Interesting. Well, that's cool. One thing about RVD that I always enjoyed, is that he's very idiosyncratic. Nobody really works like RVD. And I always liked people like that. 

2 minutes ago, El Dragon said:

I will also note the idea that "We were more backward leaning in 2016, thus our list is better" is also at least partially just not wanting to admit something that I thought was fairly obvious about the 2016 list: It's not all about being backward leaning, it was the voter base also pretty massively let nostalgia cloud their judgement.

Yes. I've said it before, the 2016 list was *very* reactionary. 

5 minutes ago, El Dragon said:

Hell, I'm 37, voted in the last GWE, and I'm incredibly nostalgic for my viewing experiences as a kid, attending my first major shows that will stick with me forever.

I turned 50 this year (yikes). I'm absolutely not nostalgic about the stuff I was watching when I was 14. I'm not nostalgic about the stuff I loved when I got on the Internet in 97/98 and got turned on Japanese wrestling. I'm not nostalgic of Lucha Underground which was my gate back into the current scene in late 2014, after basically more than ten years being turned toward the past. Nostalgia, in everything, is an enemy. 

[El-P]

7 minutes ago, NotJayTabb said:

I wouldn't say Gordy has aura, but the MVC as a unit do

Oh yeah sure. Williams especially carried that part. Gordy, as much as a menace he came off as, looked kinda like a goof. Well, a menacing goof. But he was not a picture of "cool", if you know what I mean.

[Matt D]

3 minutes ago, NotJayTabb said:

I wouldn't say Gordy has aura, but the MVC as a unit do

I was definitely thinking about Gordy and Doc running back and forth in the ring pre-match, but also about Gordy's bumping and corner clothesline.

For new footage of the last few years, people should check out Dr. Death Steve Williams/Terry Gordy vs. Dan Spivey/Doug Furnas AJPW 10/19/90. That was a wild one.

[Control21]

2 hours ago, ohtani's jacket said:

F--king Nobuhiko Takada. That's about 700 places too high. 

He's not that bad 

[El Dragon]

1 minute ago, El-P said:

I turned 50 this year (yikes). I'm absolutely not nostalgic about the stuff I was watching when I was 14. I'm not nostalgic about the stuff I loved when I got on the Internet in 97/98 and got turned on Japanese wrestling. I'm not nostalgic of Lucha Underground which was my gate back into the current scene in late 2014, after basically more than ten years being turned toward the past. Nostalgia, in everything, is an enemy. 

Well yeah, but my nostalgia is about driving up to Chicago watch RoH shows in the peak of the promotion. Nostalgia isn't an enemy imo, it's just reality. You can try to limit how much it affects you completely, but I don't think it's a bad thing unless your completely closing yourself off to liking things that are modern just because their modern.

[ohtani's jacket]

8 minutes ago, Control21 said:

He's not that bad 

I was joking. Kind of. 

[El-P]

1 minute ago, El Dragon said:

Well yeah, but my nostalgia is about driving up to Chicago watch RoH shows in the peak of the promotion. Nostalgia isn't an enemy imo, it's just reality. You can try to limit how much it affects you completely, but I don't think it's a bad thing unless your completely closing yourself off to liking things that are modern just because their modern.

The bolded part. Which is a "natural" part of aging, sadly. I see it all around me, and honestly it kinda sucks because it makes discussion difficult when people my age are all "booh everything sucks now, back in my days blablabla". I saw it happen here about wrestling, I see it happen elsewhere when I discuss music (which is basically my second, well, first, passion in life). As long as it's something sweet and non-harmful, yes, nostalgia can be ok, although it's not something that I enjoy. But anyway, it's a discussion that goes way beyond my tastes in pro-wrestling into more intimate or even political thematics, so.

[El-P]

Just now, ohtani's jacket said:

I was joking. Kind of. 

KIND OF ????? 

[Makai Club #1]

I'll say this: out of all the shoot style wrestlers, Takada is the one I'm drawn the least to. I'm more likely to watch any of the big names over him.

[ohtani's jacket]

1 minute ago, El-P said:

KIND OF ????? 

Well, I mean obviously I like seeing him get kicked in the head by Maeda. 

[Matt D]

2 minutes ago, Makai Club #1 said:

I'll say this: out of all the shoot style wrestlers, Takada is the one I'm drawn the least to. I'm more likely to watch any of the big names over him.

Going through all of UWF 2.0 (Just saw Maeda vs Takada 1/90), I wish Takada is more emotive (or alternatively, leaned into not being emotive as a clearer, more distinct quality), but I do find him as a very good foil for other wrestlers. I'd just rather usually see the other wrestlers. I'm just never upset to see someone I'm interested up against him, because I know they'll be able to push off him in interesting ways.

[El-P]

28 minutes ago, ohtani's jacket said:

Well, I mean obviously I like seeing him get kicked in the head by Maeda. 

😅

It's understated how much of an old-school carny Takada was. I mean... The double crosses, the worked shoot-fights in PRIDE. He was an underrated sneaky bastard. Him and Onita really were the two sides of the same coin, in a way.

[gungan]

You're never getting the spirit of the 2016 list back unless you gatekeep the voting process to a niche community. The early part of this list was always going to take a haphazard shape given that the voter base was fairly diverse, it was spread across different forms of social media, and there's just so much footage out there now. I've raised my eyebrow at a few of the high votes, but I'd much prefer a voting process where people feel free to go with what speaks to them instead of having a slavish devotion to canon. And if we're being perfectly honest, the 2016 list suffered from the latter problem at least to some degree.

I'm surprised Otsuka made it as far as he did. I thought I'd end up being the high voter on him (I had him at 30), so it's nice to see he almost cracked someone's top 10. Machine on the mat, awesome suplexes, super violent, fantastic seller, and the best big swing ever (and second place isn't even close). I love him to bits. That 2008 Battlarts elimination match is a best match of all time contender afaic and he arguably had the best performance in it.

[ohtani's jacket]

26 minutes ago, El-P said:

😅

It's understated how much of an old-school carny Takada was. I mean... The double crosses, the worked shoot-fights in PRIDE. He was an underrated sneaky bastard. Him and Onita really were the two sides of the same coin, in.a way.

I will say, in all seriousness, that I have a lot of respect for Takada's wife, and the battle the couple went through to be recognized as the legal parents of their surrogate children. 

[El Dragon]

I was thinking about how reasonable I felt the 150-145 drops were and then in comes Finlay to break my god damned heart.