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This is a rad thread and also unbelievably hard thing to do. I know instantly who my number 1, but Hiromu Takahashi isn't eligible. But He's still number 1 in my heart so know that. I managed to get to a shortlist of 26, which was already really quite hard to do. 10 of them were 10 New Japan guys, 7 Dragon Gate, 3 WWE, 3 CMLL, 1 NOAH, 1 US indy, 1 AEW, 1 AJPW so mainly an accurate summary of my viewing habits (except the 3 WWE guys, but then they are getting the nod for 2000s indy work mainly, so it is in fact still an accurate summary of my viewing habits). 1. Tomohiro Ishii He's a big loving tank who runs into you repeatedly. There's very little fancy about Ishii but also he has consistently been one of the best wrestlers in the world for years (he's been in the WON Most Outstanding Wrestler top 10 every year since 2013). If he's wrestling you know he's going to batter gently caress out of some poor lad and it's going to be incredible. 2. Zack Sabre Jr He's my socialist octopus boy. He likes stretching people and from each according to his ability to each according to his needs and post-rock. But he's no super man, I love the way he is so arrogant that he always wants to get into a slugfest but because he's a lanky lad he's got a glass chin. It's like someone created a wrestler and put so many points into submissions that he had to take them out of his head defence. 3. Minoru Suzuki I'm a Suzukigun guy. I want one of their towels to hang on my wall, because that'll definitely impress the ladies. He's not particularly big (I'm sure he could make 205 Live) but he is exceedingly mean. Screw Okada, this guy has my favourite dropkick in wrestling, it looks like you could actually use it in a fight it's so stiff. His theme is amazing, the aura around him is just terrifying, he's your favourite murder grandad and if you don't sing along to his entrance song he's going to eat your liver. 4. Shingo Takagi I've always loved Shingo, going back to first seeing him when he was on excursion in ROH, just this chunky looking dude with a mullet who lariats guys outta their boots. Still remember seeing him (on DVD rather than live) winning the ROH Tag titles with Naruki Doi in Liverpool, it was great. Wasn't able to follow DG much back then, so really I got back on the Shingo train in 2018 when I started to really get back into wrestling thanks to New Japan. He was in that years All Japan Champion Carnival where he had maybe the match of the tournament with Shuji Ishikawa, as well as a couple great matches with Yuji Hino & Kento Miyahara. But later that year he leaves DG to go to New Japan & that's why he's in this list. So loving good. An amazing BOSJ, an amazing G1, he's probably had one of the 2 or 3 best 2019s. 5. Will Ospreay He's a moron. He's a bad tweeter. Brexit Billy is also an amazing wrestler who has just gotten so much better this year. Like Takagi, Ospreay has been an absolute phenomenon in both the G1 & BOSJ. And also in New Japan Cup. And probably in the Super J-Cup I've not seen yet. He's unbelievable really. I hope he gets a proper break soon. 6. PAC 3rd Brit on this list, but first not based in New Japan. I never really understood how this geezer from Newcastle ended up the premier flyer in wrestling but he was for the late '00s, especially his stuff in PWG & Dragon Gate. Then he ended up in WWE where he was great in NXT but he was always limited by the house style. But he took the chance to develop his character work and despite losing a couple years of his prime I'm glad for it. PAC single handedly got me back into Dragon Gate. His return after a year frozen out by the WWE as the special new member of R.E.D. was excellently booked surprise, and he and Eita beat BxB Hulk & Shingo Takagi. And then he beat Masato Yoshino on the Fantastic Gate tour to become the Dream Gate champ. It was rad. All 4 of his defences were must watch wrestling matches, Kzy, Shun Skywalker, Dragon Kid, Ben-K. I'd say the best is the Kzy match personally. Dragon Gate business went up, interest in the west increased, and there's a legit case for PAC as WON Wrestler of the Year for his combo of in-ring work & impact on their business. Oh yeah, and the Kenny match at All Out was pretty good too. Still, hope he's not done with DG. 7. Daniel Bryan The reason he's not higher on the list is because he wrestles in the WWE and I don't watch the WWE. Which says something about how highly I regard this guy that he's still on the list in that circumstance. What can you say? He was amazing almost from his first day, his early work in places like ROH were amazing, then he'd go to England or Japan for a while & come back even better. 2005/06 ROH World Champion Bryan Danielson is probably my all time favourite championship run. Outstanding matches, brilliant character, and it all culminated in the amazingly hot match with Homicide at Final Battle 2006 where he finally lost. Then after that run there's wars with Morishima, with McGuinness, with KENTA, a great GHC Jr Heavyweight title match with Nakajima. He puts Zack Sabre Jr on the map in 2008 with a great match on a random indy show in Coventry. Amazing stuff in PWG & Dragon Gate USA & WXW. His run on the original NXT is captivating and setup a career long rivalry with The Mix (& his match with Jericho is still a really fun TV match). His character work came on leaps and bounds here, and obviously he proved that despite being a small guy by WWE standards he got over. He was the biggest star in the company. His retirement was incredibly emotional with hardly a dry eye in the house. His return was a moment of joy & excitement, especially the prospect of his contract expiring. Instead of seeing him in New Japan we got a feud with Cass but hey, can't have it all. Still amazing. 8. Masaaki Mochizuki Possibly the least known guy on my list, he's been wrestling since 1994, starting in Tenryu's WAR promotion. He ended up attached to Toryumon Japan when that launched in '99 & 20 years on he is still a regular for Dragon Gate at 49 years. He's barely wrestled in the US, couple of ROH appearances, one for Chikara, some DG USA dates, but that doesn't change that Mochizuki is awesome. Right now he's been having a great run in NOAH's N1 Victory tournament, last year he took the rookie Shun Skywalker with him to All Japan's Junior Tag Battle of Glory and helped raise Shun's profile enomorously. In Dragon Gate he's at the head of Mochizuki Dojo, a group of younger wrestlers looking to him for tutelage, including a tag team with Keisuke Okuda which has been great to watch, because what's better than one kicky guy? Two kicky guys kicking together! 9. Katsuhiko Nakajima Dude is 31 and has been wrestling for 15 years. At an extremely high level for almost all of that, first as a Junior and then as a Heavyweight. He's the protege of Kensuke Sasaki and is almost like an adopted son to him and Akira Hokuto. He's a great wrestler and a tremendous smug dickhead. 10. SANADA He's beautiful and awesome. It'd be wrong to say too much about SANADA when he is a silent man himself. Honourable mentions of course to Hiromu who is my real #1, Cesaro who I loved all the way back to his early ROH & Chikara days (Kings of Wrestling will forever be my favourite tag team), Naruki Doi (one of the best tag wrestlers of this era), Dragon Lee, SHO, Sami Zayn, El Desperado, Kzy, Barbaro Cavernario, & Susumu Yokosuka. Oh yeah, & Kazuchika Okada, he's quite good too, but I only really fell in love with him when Weird Kazu came out to play last year.
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Sep 6, 2019 11:29
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Jerusalem posted:It killed me to not include Pentagon on my list, I think I wrote up something like 16 potential people to put into my top ten and culling some of them was really drat tough. I found a lot of the list was kind of obvious, at least as to who would be on it if not their order (ask me tomorrow and I might have Ospreay 3rd for example), but the last 2 positions were really kind of hard and had about 20 names for them. I really love Despy. He's such a great junior with lots of character but he only really gets to show his stuff once a year, during the BOSJ, and he missed that this year. Rest of the time he's stuck in the forgotten Jr Tag division, and I really love his team with Kanemaru. Samoa Joe is an all time favourite like Danielson but he had a lot of lost years in TNA after they stopped letting him work with ROH in 2007. But between 2007 & starting in NXT in 2015 he managed 6 matches Meltzer rated **** or over, and the last of those was November 2009. That's 6 lost years. The fact I still have a soft spot for the Great Balls of Fire match vs Brock (& then the Summerslam 2017 4-way is maybe the best main roster WWE match I've seen in at least 5 years) isn't enough to forget all that time where Samoa Joe was just turned into another guy TNA pissed away. Kento Miyahara is one of the best big match wrestlers in the world today. There's even loads of guys who I've since thought of that could be on the shortlist. I'm trying to imagine doing a "top 10 all time" and honestly? It might melt my brain.
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Sep 6, 2019 14:31
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SG Bamboo posted:I don't wish to denigrate anyone's choices, but there is a suspicious lack of Taichi in the majority of lists. Pick up your game, Rowdy Ringsports He'd be in my New Japan top 10 but there's too many great wrestlers, sorry.
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Sep 16, 2019 11:09
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El Generico posted:Alright, here's the Adversarial/Tournament System for Determining your Favourite Wrestlers script: https://serene-noyce-4b38c8.netlify.com No Votes To Count in This Post This is fantastic. I got to Battle no 9, Taichi vs Takashi Sugiura and pulled my hair out as they are both beautiful boys. And then I ripped my scalp off at no. 11 between Shota Umino & Shun Skywalker so thanks. But none the less, lovely idea. It's the real style clashes that make the most difficult choices to me. Eventually I got to Barbaro Cavernario vs Cesaro and I've got be honest, I really really want to see that match happen now. Original Top 10 forkboy84 posted:1. Tomohiro Ishii Script Top 10 quote:1. Tomohiro Ishii Actually quite impressive how consistent they are, with only SANADA dropping out of the top 10 for Kzy. Somehow he ended up at 15 in the end. Chase Owens is 20 places ahead of Jon Moxley, suck on it Ambrose fans. Kento Miyahara & Naoya Nomura are 12 & 13 & clearly their recent great match from the 3rd was fresh in my mind and possibly biased proceedings a bit. forkboy84 fucked around with this message at 14:47 on Sep 20, 2019 |
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Sep 20, 2019 14:15
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super macho dude posted:If Shibata doesn't get honorary #1, I'm demanding for a full investigation and possible termination into JeRu's modship. Weird misspelling of Hiromu
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Sep 24, 2019 13:08
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Rarity posted:I wanted to put in my old WWE faves cause it's not their fault WWE books them like poo poo but just realised I ignored Minoru Suzuki even after his Royal Quest showing RIP friend comrade.
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Sep 28, 2019 16:12
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Yujiro got 100% of the points of Adam Page. Yikes.
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Oct 2, 2019 15:03
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Rarity posted:Man I really wish I'd voted for Juice now. He deserves to be higher and he was just bubbling under my top 10 He's at least in good company with the people that share his points total. Kento Miyahara really punished for not being in NXT or NJPW makes me sad though. He rocks.
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Oct 2, 2019 16:00
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Hellblazer187 posted:I feel pretty bad for Kofi. The reigning WWE champion, in last place in our poll. Kofi is a solid hand but not more than that. If you're not a WWE watcher he's never had the indy run of a Danielson or Claudio or Joe or Hero so probably isn't getting your vote, if you are a WWE watcher then there's just lots more talented workers and besides, NXT is a hotter product as far as this forum goes. Yes, he's definitely better than some of the others on 1 point but then I'd also say there's at least 4 from that group I'd put on my list ahead of Kofi (Harper, Hijo del Vikingo, Cedric Alexander & Hangman Page) Seems like Kofi would be a guy who'd get a higher position if it was a top 25 list rather than top 10 we were doing, he's good not great and clearly not someone people are going to be very passionate about. Honestly, the bigger indictment on WWE to me is Becky Lynch with 29 points considering how hot she was less than a year ago. They really burst that bubble, quite impressive really.
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Oct 2, 2019 16:56
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The turn around on Cody over the space of the last 13 months or so is nothing short of miraculous. He always seemed just fine in WWE, but him in New Japan was just utterly uninteresting, he was never around enough and yet kept getting fairly big matches which always ended up as disappointing or worse. Crowbarring him into the Kenny vs Kota match at KoPW because they wanted to save that singles match for a bigger occasion, but a second title shot. And here we are, 15th most beloved wrestler in this forum.
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Oct 2, 2019 19:05
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DLC Inc posted:Great loving posts for the top 20 countdown. Top tier poo poo. Even back to his indy days as Tyler Black he was a pretty divisive wrestler. Not really surprised he's still divisive, the last time I watched him his offence looked bad, he just doesn't come across as believable. But it's been a while.
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Oct 2, 2019 19:24
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Rarity posted:PSP loves capitalism At least he beat Loser Naito
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Oct 2, 2019 20:05
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It is too perfect that Ishii got the most number 1 votes and yet still lost to Okada. Such as it ever will be for 141 Tough and Hard, held down because he is too perfect.
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Oct 3, 2019 00:01
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mary had a little clam posted:Alright, so what's the best Ishii match of all time? I've seen a handful but he was the most Number One-inest guy, so what's his best match y'all? Meltzer gave his match with Omega from last year's G1 *****1/2 so that'd be a good start. There's also vs Okada from the 2016 G1. Shibata vs Ishii from 2013's G1 is great. Match with Moxley from this year's G1 is a blast. Ditto the match with Shingo. Actually you can't really go wrong with most Ishii G1 matches since 2013. He's so consistent. Outside of the G1, him and Omega had some great matches like at Destruction last year. There's a surprisingly amazing match against Tomoaki Honma from the 2015 New Beginning tour. Match with Kota Ibushi from May 2014, forget the show name For something a little different I'd recommend his match with tag partner Toru Yano from last year's G1 as well. The gimmick at the time was Yano was going to wrestle "straight", drop his bullshit. forkboy84 fucked around with this message at 02:15 on Oct 3, 2019 |
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Oct 3, 2019 02:13
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ChrisBTY posted:I skipped out of this thread once I realized I had become so jaded on wrestling I could no long manufacture a top 5 list, must less a top 10. Yes, yes he was. He was also a founding member of Pancrase, the MMA/worked shoot group where Ken & Frank Shamrock and Bas Rutten made their name before UFC. And he did mocap for Tekken's King character. And he's 51 years old. And he's one of the best wrestlers around today.
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Oct 14, 2019 07:36
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ChrisBTY posted:Did Minoru Suzuki name his faction after himself? They used to be called Kojima-Gun after Satoshi Kojima, and then TAKA & Taichi turned on him after about 6 months at Wrestling Dontaku 2011. They tried to beat him up but couldn't and then Minoru Suzuki turned up and choked Kojima out. This was surprising the last time he'd wrestled more than 1 or 2 matches a year in New Japan was 2005, though he had been on that year's Wrestle Kingdom V.
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Oct 20, 2019 22:23
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Veryslightlymad posted:2011? Holy hell, People aren't lying, the factions are way too drat stagnant At least Suzukigun went away for a couple of years to NOAH. Chaos has been together since 2009 when GBH (except Honma) turned on Makabe.
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Oct 20, 2019 22:55
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Venomous posted:They're still pretty stagnant tho. Goto, Yoshi-Hashi, and Ishii shouldn't be there anymore because Okada's hosed them over a lot by constantly being the top babyface/near-constant champ since WK10, and yet they're not budging??? Honma would not be great in anything at this point, he's Nakanishi levels of immobile. The rest is fair, though personally I think just redoing GBH would be a bit boring it'd be better than the almost complete stagnation in stables since LIJ came along.
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Oct 21, 2019 21:07
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If I did this now SANADA and PAC would be a lot lower because PAC left DG and thus I've not seen him in 6+ months and for whatever reason I'm just not feeling SANADA at the mo, there's been some duds. Hiromu number 1, and Susumu Yokosuka probably the other new addition. So now you know.
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Mar 1, 2020 12:04
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