Jmare007

The only lucha guy that made me overcome my struggles with commentary everytime because he was so damn good. Still feel like I have a ton to keep catching up with his work. Really looking forward seeing if he can end up as a n°1 candidate for me once I have a more rounded look at him and not just cherry picking like I did last time.

The most consistent pillar, the one with the most longevity as a good-top performer and the most versatile (as much as those guys could be). Only reason I tend to put him below Misawa is because of the elbow throwing bastard's ridiculous 90-97 run which I still believe is the best peak ever but every time I read or hear a case in favor of Kawada I end up agreeing with basically everything. First time reading about this. Kawada always seemed to be seen as the "pissed off one" out of the pillars as far I can recall.

Seven years after posting this I feel pretty much the same. Late 90's Kobashi is just too much of too much for me and is the worst of the 4 pillars in that regard. I find some of his NOAH stuff jaw dropping but there's a the "here he goes again" doing too much for me. For some reason it bothers me more with Kobashi pretty much anyone else though top 30 is still incredibly high so it's not like I think he's not incredible most of the time.

Mojo was still employed??? holy shit. And yeah, to be honest, they could cut 50 more people and it would still feel they have too many wrestlers on the roster.

I'm obviously on the opposite end of someone like Jetlag as I fucking love the Strong Big Japan style and think Nomura is a perfect addition to it. It's very, very hard for me to watch a match he's in and not come out thinking Nomura did as much as possible to make the match better, and when it's a style I already love, then of course a ton of good shit come out of it. I do agree Big Japan has taken too fucking long in giving him a legit push. But considering how laughably slow BJW booking is, it's clear as day they see Nomura as their future star alongside Aoki. Those two are the only ones getting singles matches against important "outsiders" (in the case of Nomura, you have Dick Togo and Minoru Suzuki, both good matches btw). BUT there's no question he could be doing much bigger things at this point considering his ability and potential. But anyways, as I said in the nomination post, he's a prodigy and in 5 years he's been able to build a resume that could get really fucking interesting in the next few years. If I had to vote today he would have a legit chance of making my ballot. I truly hope we get so him work more different roles and show what he can do when he doesn't have to be the young, promising kid with a chip on his shoulder.

Too inconsistent for my liking. For every performance and match I'm impressed with, there's a fuck ton I'm bored or disappointed with. He did get a really good match (maybe two?) out of Seth Rollins, sadly they had a myriad of really bad ones too. It would take a really crazy run for him to be a candidate for me.

It gets difficult when the quality of the match is high because that only happens because of how great the wrestlers perform. So when you have someone that has many high tier performances, is much easier than individual work or "random good matches". "Random match theory" is a pretty damn good tool for this though.

"Well pal, what do you say about coming back so you can cut people and all the heat for it, huh? HA-HA!"

They are high anyways because of consistency of having those "5 stars performances" regardless of overall feeling in a match. Some wrestlers are just too damn great and it shows everytime they set foot in a ring. The input vs output (and/or booking) argument is the most difficult to figure out in these sort of projects though. At least it is to me, I'm laughably inconsistent when it comes to figure out who goes where in a ranking because of it.

My biggest fear with Abe is that he ends up getting lost in the shuffle once his tag with Nomura reaches it's limit and/or ends. I'm glad he's been getting All Japan bookings and stuff like Colega Pro but we'll see how booking treats him in the next couple of years. As with other fringe GWE ballot candidates, I like him a lot and will put him in consideration but as much I enjoy his work, he doesn't have enough so far. I truly hope he gets more and more chances to show what he's made of.

She can be a asset to a roster but not GWE worthy.

Add me to the group of people that always liked Shingo but the "house style" of Dragon Gate kept me from checking him out for most of his work there, as I was burned out by DG like a year before Shingo got his first Dream Gate run. Liked him in ROH, the DGUSA matches with Bryan and Davey (one of the few times were I loved ridiculous excess) and was thrilled to watch him in Big Japan and All Japan. I knew people would go crazy for him once he got to New Japan because he's too good not to impress. I was actually a little annoyed he debuted as a Junior because he had already worked heavyweights everywhere else, lol. So, uh, yeah @Alan4L we in here for some Dragon Gate recommendations. I'd love to see underdog, monster and heel Shingo in that setting.

Shit, how much new Andre since 2016 is there? point me in the right directions please!

Not like we can know this type of thing but finding out how convinced he is with the melodramatic self conscious epic "formula" that Michaels (and HHH? maybe?) as better type of match as the ones he was having before. Like, was Gargano more into the stuff he did as DIY and those first big singles matches or the ones he's had before? Are all of those just agents telling him how to work and him complying and it all depends on is his agent? I don't know, but it's such a big difference between matches that it's incredibly interesting to me. Specially with the way NXT is run.

I was about to say Funk as well.

Only "good faith" argument I could come up with is that they booking is aimed at "helping" the heel by making him get huge heat by beating the local guy. Of course, I don't think anything WWE does is in good faith anymore and even if that was the case it's still a massively dumb decision that they should know it's dumb because it has never worked: the heels never come out as bigger villains and the babyfaces of course don't get more popular not get any more momentum by being screwed.

He was my n°1 in 2016 but I was still shocked he ended up as high as n°4 in the final list (behind Hansen, Funk and Flair). He's the definitely "peak" case as it's hard to find a better 7 year —maybe 10 depending on how you view him— run from anyone He probably has the biggest drop in quality before and after said peak out of any of the n°1 contenders too. Shit, he probably has the most "negatives" out of that group too: longevity, versatility, quality of opponents. But that peak seems to be just too undeniable with too much great-all time stuff for enough people (myself included) to keep him at that level. I think he takes a Jumbo-like hit this time around but I was wrong in 2016 and might be again in 2026. Him and Funk are the only wrestlers I never get tired of watching their work and have no problem revisiting him (like I'll have with someone like Flair, for example) and it's gonna be a struggle to find people that I'll put above them. One of the main things I wanna do this time around is challenge my Misawa bias as much as I can. Last time I always went back to "but that peak is just untouchable", we'll see if that continues to be the case.

I agree with Matt on this one. I don't see it as a big knock on Steamboat but it is a potential tie breaker when comparing with other top tier, elite guys when it comes to ranking him. I guess the question is how much could he fall for such a small sample, I also agree that it can't be much...but it is something.

I do too but I do think they put some sort of ceiling in how high he can get in a ballot. Specially the HHH match as the one with Taker I thought it was a "good enough" Roman performance and it was Taker who just couldn't hang that night. Then again, he's gonna get so much opportunities from now till the vote (if he wants to keep working/stays healthy) that those WM main events might just end up being seen as outliers were he was too young to make chicken salad out of chicken shit.

Indeed someone who's final placing is no doubt going to piss off one portion of the voters, no matter where he ends ups. I think Omega is fine, for that reason I find him extremely overrated as he gets so much praise but I understand how and why he appeals to so much people. Don't think I'll be rating him because 1) Even though I've enjoyed a good number of his New Japan and DDT matches, it never warranted a GWE ballot in my view, and 2) I don't see myself doing the work and watching his AEW stuff, and I only saw like the first month of TV and two PPV matches of his. Which didn't change my opinion one bit but regardless of that, I'm just not gonna have enough of him to put him in. But who knows, he'll more than likely be back working in Japan in some capacity and if I check some matches there and come out impress with his stuff, maybe I'll check AEW.

Thanks for the recommendations!

Kind of a random thought but after listening to the GWE 2026 podcast I thought a good idea would be to make an episode with different people giving their approach to this project. Even though I completely agree with being inclusive and welcome as much new people as we can. I think even a bigger barrier to entry than having people looking or taking down to other is that hearing or reading "let's make a list of the 100 greatest wrestlers we have footage of" feels like an impossible task or something that "can't be done" because they feel they haven't watched "enough" wrestling or don't feel like addressing some gaps is possible. I know I tried to make a couple of folks participate in 2016 but just couldn't get them to submit a ballot because of that. Maybe hearing how different folks will tackle this, and others just being comfortable doing with that they already know + being open to watching anything that's pimped and sounds interesting to them, will also help this seems more approachable and fun.

Can someone do a list of 10 or so matches from Sugi since 2016? I've only seen a handful (with the one were he kills himself against Nakajima from 18' being the most memorable one). I've always liked him a lot and was one of the sole reasons I kept watching NOAH for a couple of years. Does he rely too much on excess? sure, but he's still fun to watch, specially because he has no reward for his well being and ends up having matches that are insane. I'll revisit him for sure and would like more current stuff too as I completely threw NOAH out of my watching habits a long ass time ago.

The Ronda nomination made think that nominating this two was worth it. Takuya Nomura Talk about a guy that "got it" as soon as he debuted, four months after his debut he's having fun matches in Big Japan and All Japan. Nomura is as close to a prodigy as you can get. The guy knows how to sell, show fire, strike and make a match more interesting with his work. Sure, he has the "advantage" of being a disrespectful punk, so him showing up against bigger and more established opponents was a novelty he had from the get go. But not everyone can pull that off as well as he does it. We are five years into his career and he has MOTYCs in singles and tags in at least 3 of them, and whole bunch of fun multi man tags, tag team and singles performances. His team with Fuminori Abe (Astronauts) is one of the best in the word. By the time we vote, we'll have a decade's worth of work and he'll most likely get a big singles run in one or two promotions so better start getting familiar with him now so we can evaluate him as worthy of making our ballots. Matches: Takuya Nomura vs Hideki Suzuki - BJW 6/20/2018 https://rutube.ru/video/222f24151d44575cc4999a23458a2f41/ Takuya Nomura vs Yuji Okabayashi - BJW 7/21/2019 https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x7h0nna Takuya Nomura & Fuminori Abe vs Daisuke Sekimoto & Kohei Sato - BJW 8/10/2020 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BlejQgSe6Qo Fuminori Abe Just like Takuya Nomura, I think it's best to get a nomination early because by the time we vote he's gonna have a decade worth of footage and as another young prodigy, he can end up making a case to get into some ballots. Abe is really small, but he has no issue working big. He can also be very flashy, very stiff and take a whole lot of punishment. He can pull off some incredible reversals and has done some really great stuff trying to keep the FUTEN/Battlearts aura around puroresu as well as more traditional work that is also top notch. Matches: Fuminori Abe vs Takuya Nomura - BJW 1/17/2018 https://rutube.ru/video/630a7005c6882e692f3454ef3b9d5f00/?pl_type=user&pl_id=1067514 Fuminori Abe vs Kohei Sato - Zero1 2/2/2019 https://rutube.ru/video/222df24ca517c074181f041ed553c4ff/ Fuminori Abe & Takuya Nomura vs Twin Towers - BJW 12/20/2020 https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x7yhhr7

You didn't think even the match against Astronauts was at least "good"?