Watching the Top 100

[Matt D]

4 hours ago, ohtani's jacket said:

#94 Claudio Castagnoli

Same deal as Kingston.

Kenny Omega, Swerve Strickland, The Opps (Katsuyori Shibata, Powerhouse Hobbs & Samoa Joe) & Willow Nightingale (w/Prince Nana) vs. Death Riders (Claudio Castagnoli, Jon Moxley, Marina Shafir & Wheeler Yuta) & The Young Bucks (Matthew Jackson & Nicholas Jackson), Anarchy In The Arena Match (AEW, 5/25/25)

What the fuck was this? This was one of the worst matches I've seen in my entire life. I hated crowd brawling and backstage fights while it was happening in the 90s. Why would I want to watch a pussified version of it in 2025? I think Claudio was the guy fighting Fat Joe. He did his giant swing a couple of times later in the match. God the shit later on was awful. The Bucks are awful. Kenny Omega is awful. Claudio deserved a better match than this, but Dave and his wrestling midlife crisis gave this five stars. The CZW match was so much better. I need to go watch a classic concession brawl to wash the taste of this match out of my mouth with mustard and ketchup. 

Someone extrapolate forward what Ospreay match he has to watch.

[ohtani's jacket]

#93 Necro Butcher

Necro Butcher may be the lowest cagematch ranked wrestler to make the top 100 at 6.96.

Team CZW (Chris Hero, Necro Butcher & Super Dragon) vs. Team ROH (Adam Pearce, BJ Whitmer & Samoa Joe) (ROH, 4/22/06)

This was pretty great. Wrestlers, I'm telling you, if you hate a guy, I mean really, really hate a guy, it's much better if you beat him up in and around the ring than in the bowels of the arena. Just letting you now. This obviously had great heat and a ton of fantastic violence. I loved how much Joe was enjoying throwing cats around at the start of the match. It was a nice bit of juxtaposition to the rage he showed after the bout was over. I like Necro Butcher. I mean, how could you not? He looks like a mentally ill vagrant, and has such a simple, direct approach to wrestling. Loved all of his exchanges with Joe, and the exchanges with Whitmer. Super Dragon was low key great in a style of bout that you don't automatically associate him with. Hero seemed to be ducking the action a bit. Perhaps the camera man wasn't following him, or the editor didn't find any shots he liked. I thought his selling was a bit iffy at times. They could have trimmed the fat a bit, but it was a heck of a spectacle, and a great set up for the Cage of Death match. Claudio's cameo at the end was better than anything in the AEW match. There's your Claudio match, folks. 

 

[Phil Schneider]

16 hours ago, WingedEagle said:

This match sounds like hepatitis. I'm not sure if that's a good or bad thing.

If you have never seen this, take 20 minutes and watch it, you might not like it but it is incredibly memorable.

[Tetsujin]

Maybe not your cup of tea but the first Anarchy in the Arena (2022) is genuinely awesome. That one takes itself very seriously. It should have been the only one in history, because any succesor tried to recreate or even surpass what made the first one so great, failling misserably as you just witnessed.

[Phil Schneider]

Yeah the first Anarchy in the Arena is my pick for best AEW match ever, go buy my book I have some great quotes from a bunch of guys in that match. I was live for the Anarchy in the Arena match OJ reviewed, maybe the only Meltzer five spot I have been live for (did he give anything else on that PPV 5?) but it didn't do a ton for me live. I was obviously pretty burned out from helping run DEAN 2 the day before. 

[HeadCheese]

For context, I watched the first Anarchy in The Arena years after it happened (so I knew what happend in the match).

I think all of those kind of matches are always fun to great but, have a ceiling on not being match of the year level great though. I think the first one felt more hate lead and alot of the other ones have been big dumb spectacle party matches especially leaning into music while the match happens.

The TV one they ran (Rascalz, Jack Perry, and Young Bucks vs. FTR, Ricochet, and Gates of Agony) this year was really fun too.

[Phil Schneider]

I was live at that one too!

[ohtani's jacket]

#92 Mayumi Ozaki

Ozaki is a bit of a strange one. She has an overall 9.14 rating, but cagematch users have only rated a small fraction of her matches. It's a mix of her most well-known matches and random stuff from this century that I've never heard of. I'm intrigued by that stuff, but at the same time I'm not sure that I trust cagematch ratings.

Akira Hokuto & Mayumi Ozaki vs. Chigusa Nagayo & Meiko Satomura (GAEA 3/11/01)

This was presumably part of the build to the Hokuto/Satomura singles match. It's a typically messy GAEA match that favors heat over match structure. They cram a good 25 minute match into 13 minutes, which may be merciful depending on how much you like Joshi. The finish is exciting and the post match brawling is cool. You definitely leave feeling you've seen something good even if it's not quite as good as it could have been. Ozaki isn't far removed from her prime. She gives herself a hideous, unnecessary crimson mask, scraps, gets thrown around like a ragdoll, and sells great. I don't think she quite clicks with Hokuto as they're too similar, but she doesn't detract from the main storyline of Hokuto going after mother bear and baby cub. The Hokuto/Satomura match is one of the great matches of the early 00s, IMO, which makes the setup worth seeing even if it's pure setup rather than a great match on its own. 

[ohtani's jacket]

#91 Shinsuke Nakamura 

Kota Ibushi vs. Shinsuke Nakamura (NJPW 1/4/15)

I honestly can't remember which Nakamura New Japan matches I've seen. There's a good chance that I've seen this before. I know that I definitely haven't seen his WWE work, but I figured that he made the top 100 based mostly on his New Japan run. His entrance immediately reminded me of why I never vibed with Nakamura. His look was different for wrestling but not different from what a lot of non-salary men types are continuing to do today. He borrowed a lot of his showmanship from punk rock and J-Rock, and part of me thinks I should like it, but at the end of the day my Japanese wrestling hero is Akira Maeda and Nakamura is not Akira Maeda. He's fairly restrained here (by Nakamura standards) outside of his entrance. The problem is that Ibushi isn't that interesting. Nakamura may act like he's on speed, but Ibushi is plain boring. I liked the finishing stretch here, but five stars? Not in my sky. 

 

[ohtani's jacket]

If I didn't make it clear, I'd take Kandori and Nakamura out of the top 100.

[Jetlag]

See, I love Shinobu Kandori, I put her pretty high on my Top 100, and the scowling faces, her ability to look like a badass, her being good at strikes and submissions were a big reason for that. To me, she's like The Rock if The Rock was a shooter and like, a much more interesting wrestler. I disagree about her being bad at selling, transitions and storytelling too. I've watched a lot of JWP and LLPW, there's still more I have yet to watch but my hunch about her being more than a foil is pretty considering how she elevates matches even against mid-tier opposition. She is defininitely a great seller not in the sense of selling cummulative damage constantly but rather that things always become interesting when she starts selling vulnerability. And as far as her storytelling goes, I think she is great at looking like a badass and making me believe there's a fight going on and what more story does a wrestling match need than having two badasses fight. The Hotta match may very well be the embodiment of that as it's ot about crafting some kind of lengthy intricate epic, it's more about recreating the feel of a crazy fight oozing with aura (and blood). 

[ohtani's jacket]

#90 El Dandy

Man, the way El Dandy is treated on cagematch is rubbish. His most well-known matches have been rated (but only by 30-40 people), but he only has something like 17 matches with ratings and half a dozen of those are WCW matches. I suppose that's indicative of what lucha is up against as a whole, but I feel that we've let El Dandy down a bit. We were so excited to discover his work in 2006 and were championing him so hard, then we kind of abandoned him. People move on and watch other things, and Dandy didn't add to his case a lot after the Navarro feud, but hopefully as Loss enters the '89-90 period with Wrestling Playlists, there will be a Dandy revival.

Chavo Guerrero Jr., Juventud Guerrera, Lizmark Jr. & Super Calo vs. El Dandy, La Parka, Psychosis & Silver King (WCW, 1/24/98)

I'm fairly certain I've seen this before, but I'd seen everything else on the list and I was curious as to why Dave gave this four stars. It's not a bad match, but it's no different to a match they could have had on Nitro or Thunder and not what I'd consider four stars. Dandy is in it. His stuff looks good as he was fairly fit around this time period, but he's not a major participant in the bout. It's most notable for Parka attacking everyone with his chair afterwards. Interestingly, WCW may have spawned a thousand La Parka fans and all the El Dandy doubt, thereby making them responsible for their individual placements on the GWE list.  

I wish I'd seen something better for El Dandy, but cagematch is clearly not the place for lucha hidden gem research. 

 

[ohtani's jacket]

On 6/23/2026 at 11:51 PM, Jetlag said:

See, I love Shinobu Kandori, I put her pretty high on my Top 100, and the scowling faces, her ability to look like a badass, her being good at strikes and submissions were a big reason for that. To me, she's like The Rock if The Rock was a shooter and like, a much more interesting wrestler. I disagree about her being bad at selling, transitions and storytelling too. I've watched a lot of JWP and LLPW, there's still more I have yet to watch but my hunch about her being more than a foil is pretty considering how she elevates matches even against mid-tier opposition. She is defininitely a great seller not in the sense of selling cummulative damage constantly but rather that things always become interesting when she starts selling vulnerability. And as far as her storytelling goes, I think she is great at looking like a badass and making me believe there's a fight going on and what more story does a wrestling match need than having two badasses fight. The Hotta match may very well be the embodiment of that as it's ot about crafting some kind of lengthy intricate epic, it's more about recreating the feel of a crazy fight oozing with aura (and blood). 

Politics

 

You've undoubtedly seen more Kandori than I have. I could be way off, but I also like the Kandori/Toyota match more than the Hotta bout, and I don't think fans of the Hotta match will agree with me there. 

[ohtani's jacket]

#89 Roderick Strong

Roderick Strong vs. Zack Sabre Jr. (PWG, 4/3/15)

This match has a whopping 9.26 score on cagematch. With a score that high you'd think it was the second coming of Flair vs. Steamboat. Well, it's not. It's just another ragged indie match. This was my first time seeing Zach Sabre Jr. He was playing a heel, or maybe he wasn't, but either way he seemed like a bit a tosser. I'm in two minds about doing the faux World of Sport style in this day and age. On one hand, it looks out of place in a typical US indie match. On the other hand, it's a point of difference and adds an element of styles makes fights. Having watched hundreds of hours of European wrestling, nothing Sabre did stood out much. His strikes were incredibly limp. However, this isn't about Sabre. It's about Strong. I like Strong. I like most of the Strong matches I've seen. He's a good hand. There have been hundreds of good hands in the history of professional wrestling. Pick your favorite good hand. That guy that you really like. I can guarantee that Roderick Strong isn't better than your favorite hand. You don't get a prize for being consistently good. Roderick Strong, we've got a thing around here called the top 100, and you're not in the top 100. 

 

[ohtani's jacket]

#88 Bruno Sammartino

I don't expect the users on cagematch to be as quite as enlightened about Bruno as people in our circles, but it assumes me that he has a 9.28 rating yet his highest match rating is a 7.83. If that's not WWE lore for you, I don't know what is. 

Bruno Sammartino & Tito Santana vs. Adrian Adonis & Randy Savage (Steel Cage Tag Team Match, WWF 7/12/86)

This is a fun match. It's not as fun as watching Bruno at the end of his prime, and all of the crowd-watching you can do with late 70s and early 80s MSG WWF shows, but it's a bit like reading your favorite comic books from when you were a kid. It's not high art, but the characters are there, and the art and the colors still pop. They work fairly hard for what this is. They just don't get a lot of time. You can imagine a dozen different scenarios where this becomes a dramatic masterpiece, but it's just a match, and as far as matches go, it isn't bad. Things that crossed my mind -- the amazing Savage/Santana feud, whether Adonis gaining weight mattered or not, and how concerned Bruno was with his hair, or lack thereof, once they won the bout. 

 

 

[Matt D]

14 hours ago, ohtani's jacket said:

#89 Roderick Strong

Roderick Strong vs. Zack Sabre Jr. (PWG, 4/3/15)

This match has a whopping 9.26 score on cagematch. With a score that high you'd think it was the second coming of Flair vs. Steamboat. Well, it's not. It's just another ragged indie match. 

 

This is a wonderful project.

[ohtani's jacket]

#87 Tetsuya Naito

Kenny Omega vs. Tetsuya Naito (NJPW, 8/13/16)

I could never relate to Tetsuya Naito. He looks like he's been hit in the head too many times. I suppose he has an everyman quality to him, but he doesn't look like my Japanese wrestling heroes. I actually wanted to watch another Naito/Omega match that Dave gave five and three quarter stars to as opposed to the mere five stars he gave this, but these things are kind of hard to find and I wasn't in the mood to search for it.

I hated the opening to this match with the pair of them spitting on each other. It was supposed to be a sign of disrespect, but it reminded me of actual fights in Japan where the guys grab each other by the collar and shut at each other with high-pitched voices. Just fight already. When they got down to the nitty gritty it was okay. I was amused by how much it resembled a WWE match. I imagine there were a whole bunch of people opining in 2016 how much better this was than the WWE when it was the same thing. Sure, their move sets are deeper and they go longer, but it's the same beats and the same structure. There is precious little difference between Kenny Omega and Shawn Michaels other than the fact that Michaels is a better actor. The end result was that it was okay. You can have your Naito if you want him. Omega was far more tolerable in Japan than he is in AEW. If you zone out and enjoy the nearfalls, it's not bad. 

[ohtani's jacket]

#86 Ricky Morton

Bobby Eaton & Dennis Condrey vs. Ricky Morton & Robert Gibson (MACW, 8/16/86)

Ricky Morton is another territories guy that cagematch does dirty. I dunno what the frack is going on over there, but there's some sort of generational divide going on. I'm not gonna say anything bad about Ricky Morton. You know the resume. I could go either way on whether I think he belongs in the top 100 depending on my mood and the time of day. This match didn't do a ton for me. It felt like an over-glorified house show match. I've never been a ride or die territories guy, but I like a little bit of US territories stuff every now and again. The only time this caught my attention was when Eaton went to the top. There were some cool moments here and there, but nothing that rewrote the book on tag team wrestling. A lot of people swear by this match as the best Midnight Express vs. Rock 'n' Roll Express match, and maybe it is, but the way it's shot means you're constantly watching the back of Morton and Gibson's heads, so even if it is the best match in their feud, it's not great for diving into the things that made Morton great. It's actually a better Gibson performance, fwiw. Back of the head notwithstanding.  

[Owen Edwards]

great thread, OJ