GWE 2026 Reaction Thread

[ohtani's jacket]

I like Regal, but when push comes to shove, I don't think he's as good as Grey, Breaks, Cortez, Finlay or Marty Jones. I also think Lord James Blears was a better Lord. Regal's good, though, so I'm not gonna complain too much. A lot of his best stuff is against Benoit, which may be problematic for some. Personally, I think FInlay was better in the WWE than Regal, and I'm not a huge fan of Regal's latter matches where his face would turn different shades of purple. I'm all for selling, but I can do without wrestlers feigning a medical event. 

[ohtani's jacket]

11 hours ago, KB8 said:

I'm down to 52. 38 of my top 50 are left and 21 of my top 25. Only Yoshida is gone from my top 10 so far. 

I'm pretty similar to Boricua in that there are still gaps I want to fill, but they're mostly gaps around wrestlers who've fallen already, like the WoS and French Catch guys, and on the right day maybe some modern joshi or Japanese indies. 2010s New Japan will be well represented in the top 100 and I'm okay with that not being a gap I'll try to fill because for the most part it's a gap by design. I've tried to fill it already and it didn't take. But you're not going to love EVERYONE in a top 100 so...shut up and eat your cereal and stop complaining, I guess. 

I think you'd enjoy WoS and French Catch. If you like lucha then it's an easy transition. The list only scratched the surface of what each style has to offer. 

[Tetsujin]

Tully is fucking awesome and it's a shame he couldn't be higher, although with the backlash the 80s guys received I guess I have to feel grateful for him staying on the main list. He's definitely not worse than Kevin Owens or Kenny Omega but hey, though (I'm gonna be saying that a lot these days).

[El McKell]

15 minutes ago, tcg91 said:

Regal is the only WoS wrestler who made the top 100, even though he’s not even close to being the best from that era. I like Regal, but his list of great matches pales in comparison to Breaks’, Rocco’s, Grey’s and so on. Does he deserve to be in the top 100 just because he got tons of WWE screen time?

Nobody who voted for Regal is doing so thinking of him as a WoS wrestler. They're doing so because they see him as a top tier worker in WCW from 92-96 and in WWE from like 05-10. I didn't vote for Regal and I did vote for Steve Grey and Clive Myers so I might not be the best person to talk, but Regal's best work is all in the USA, it doesn't affect his case that he wasn't close to being a high level performer on WoS.

[ohtani's jacket]

Regal worked a Euro style so there's no reason you can't compare him to other European wrestlers, though to be fair, he was a heavyweight so it's not fair to compare him to the lighter weight guys. I could see folks thinking he was better than most of the British heavyweights, though we're lacking footage of a lot of the heavy hitters. 

[HowtobeaMark]

I had Regal at 47

The matches that solidified him for me in chronological order were Dalibar Singh, Barry Windham, Arn Anderson, Zbyszko, Hashimoto, Muto, nWo vs NJPW 10 Man, Finlay, Sting, Psicosis, Benoit, TLC Ladder Tag, Ambrose & Cesaro. 

The balance is mostly in WCW's favour. 

To me there is a good range of stuff there, theres the technical stuff, the brawling, the bullying, gimmick matches and even a fired up babyface performance

[ohtani's jacket]

That reminds me of how much I love the Regal/Sting matchup. I love how Sting always tries to work the mat in those contests. GAB is the famous one, but all of their TV matches are great. 

[HowtobeaMark]

I forgot to mention the Flair series!!

[ethantyler]

Regal benefits from his style being unique in the US environment. The same applies to Hayes in France, a number of WoS guys who jumped to the US in the 1970s, etc. If Regal was a primary WoS candidate , being compared more with other WoS candidates, then he probably doesn't end up as highly rated. 

[Tetsujin]

Ok reading the thread I thought Regal came out already and I gasped a bit.

For Ikeda, I didn't vote for him because of not seeing enough tonfeel comfortable to do so, but what I've seen (the Ishikawa series, a 1997 Otsuka singles, the 2010 Ono match and some random BattlArts tags here and there) is really cool. He's just a very cool dude in general, with some of the best kicks ever and an attitude I really get behind, I like him much more than Ishikawa at the moment.

[MasterJonBurr]

Did anyone else feel a nostalgic rush of bittersweet glory when that Mantaur guy flipped his shit? Just me? Felt like when Bill Barnwell used to nuke me from orbit in the old DVDVR chat room. Oh how I’ve missed those days….

[Boss Rock]

Ikeda was my 65. Of all the shoot style/BattlArts folks, Ikeda is my favorite. Just gloriously violent. In 2020 he and Ishikawa had another barnburner in wXw. I'm pleasantly surprised he not only made the cut once again, but he actually improved by 2!

Barry was my 70. I've mentioned that U.S. 80's isn't my favorite era of wrestling, but Barry was different. Excellent offense and execution, could play both face and heel with ease. The Flair matches are still really, really good.