highflyflow

Surprisingly lack of discussion for YAMATO considering he's hyped as a low-key WOTY candidate for the Dragon Gate fanbase. Where does everyone stand on YAMATO today? Where does he rank as far as best Toryumon/DG guys ever? How does he compare to contemporaries from other companies like Shiozaki, Tanahashi, Sekimoto, HARASHIMA, Okada, Naito, Ibushi, etc?

Love the 02 Hero match, have seen practically nothing else. Any recommendations? I know the Kingston cage match gets a lot of hype, and I'm planning on getting to it.

Don't know if I'd vote for Kanemaru but I really really enjoy his early 2000s NOAH stuff, I'm up to 2002 and imo he's easily the best junior in the promotion by that point sans Ogawa. Would like to hear a case for him as someone that's mostly unfamiliar with his post-NOAH work.

Got all the way up to #229 in 2016. Where do people stand on Gino Hernandez currently?

Anyone considering Sandman this time around? I'm not nearly familiar enough with ECW to make a case for him, but I do enjoy Sandman and think he's probably better than he was given credit for in this thread.

The wonderful thing about the project this time around is that a wrestler like Yuki Ishikawa, someone who most would agree is great and deserving of consideration for a top 100 list (he was #70 in 2016), is now getting legitimate consideration as a potential dark horse #1 candidate. I wasn't a part of the process last time around, but judging from all the threads I'd imagine that if someone were to float the idea of Ishikawa as a #1 contender, it would be met with a level of derision by a few vocal contributors, and would inevitably invite comparisons to a certain wrestler, and I think it's a good sign that that's not the case anymore. One of the wrestlers I'm most interested to see where they end up next year, especially given how he's added to his case in the near-decade since the last poll (the 2020 Ikeda match especially).

Really, any promotion? Even mudshow Indies? Again I ask, who cares? Why would the latter outweigh the former in this situation?

Surprising lack of recent discussion for Murdoch here given that he was talked up as a potential top 30 candidate in this thread in the early stages, and got all the way up to 53 in 2016, between Greg Valentine and Akira Hokuto. Where do people stand on Dick Murdoch going into 2026?

With all due respect, who could possibly care about this? I don't care that a wrestler didn't get courted by one of the worst, most laughably moronic promotions in wrestling, that's actively emphasizing recruiting athletes to their awful PC system in favor of indie darlings. Is it a testament to those that did break through the glass ceiling in the biggest wrestling promotion in the world? Sure, and it's completely fine to value that when looking at their case, but if not then I really don't see it as a big deal, given their remarkably narrow view on what makes a good and successful wrestler in the first place.

"you're not a good enough worker if you don't main event in WWE" is a hell of an opinion to hold while participating in a project like this.

A mostly negative thread here. I can see why, on first impression, Jeff Hardy doesn't seem like what you would traditionally define as a "great" wrestler, let alone one of the 100 greatest of all time, as a representative of the hardcore WWF/E tag matches of 25 years ago; however, as his defenders have pointed out earlier in this thread, there's more to him that meets the eye. I very much agree with the notion that Jeff was one of the best babyfaces in the WWE, probably in all of North America at minimum, between 2006-2008, and he did this while working fairly standard singles and tag matches with his brother. I stand by pretty much all of the matches Jimmy Redman recommended for this period, and I think the Triple H series is especially a feather in his cap considering the dearth of quality in Hunter's other singles work during this time period. I do think, though, as Redman also stated, that the hardcore period of his career, 1999-2003 to be specific, gets misconstrued; he's not as good of a seller then as he is later in his career, but he's not exactly lacking in this department either. Despite the matches he partook in often being considered car crashes, the dangerous feeling those matches provide still holds up decades later because of Jeff's commitment to take the nuttiest bumps possible and then his commitment to selling the weight of that work. Am I going to vote for Jeff? If I did, he'd probably be my vanity #100 for sentimental reasons, being my first favorite wrestler and someone whose work I still enjoy. But I think he's worthy of discussion, too, and probably a little underrated in this bubble of wrestling discussion.

At the very least, I'm considering (not in order): El Hijo del Santo Negro Casas El Dandy El Satanico Blue Panther Sangre Chicana Atlantis Villano III LA Park Mocho Cota Virus Hechicero Rush Pirata Morgan Black Terry Fuerza Guerrera Perro Aguayo Jerry Estrada Emilio Charles Jr Gran Hamada La Fiera Mistico MS-1 A lot of these candidates are here because of the 1980s DVDVR lucha set, which I've finished recently.

Mox has a very strong chance of making my list, especially after the incredible performance he had at All In last Saturday, it's just a matter of combing through his pre-WWE Indies work and touching up on his WWE work to see what range I could place him in. I do fall in the camp of thinking he's been one of, if not the best wrestler of the 2020s so far, and for all the things I could nitpick at him for, I can only see him solidifying that case over the next 5 years into the 2030s.

Absolutely watch the Ueno and HARASHIMA matches from last year

How do people feel about this current heel run in the context of Cena's GWE case? It seems like it's almost universally panned already, and we still are months away from its conclusion. Do you genuinely hold it against his case, or do you give him more of a pass due to this being his last year as an active worker and his more sporadic schedule since becoming a movie star? Does the fact that this, being his only real heel run, is a disaapointment mean anything to you? I suppose to those skeptical of Cena in general this doesn't do anything but confirm their biases against him. For me personally, I'm very high on him as a candidate, but I do think the lack of any real substance so far in this last year has hurt him a bit in my eyes, along with the decreased workload since 2016.