Discuss here.

I have no hot takes on Kenichiro Arai. Joe Lanza brought him up in the "Who Will You Be the High Vote On?" thread and I felt the need to nominate him. He's SUPER grimy and has become the king of Japanese indies this year, but I can't fathom him making my list. Love the guy, always puts in a solid effort, but he's not a top 100 wrestler of all-time.

He might be a Top 100 all time wrestler now. He was always fun as the hard headed drunken master in Dragon Gate, but at some point he turned into a sneaky technical master in a grease monkey suit. Thanks to the promotion known as MUTOHA he has been in a string of epic lengthy main event matches. The GENTARO match is a MOTDC and Arai is a big part of that. Combing through his back catalogue in other promotions like HEAT UP, FREEDOMS, Asuka Project, the occasional sparse Dragon Gate appearance where he actually gets to craft a singles match, he has a lot of gems in his resume and is always worth watching. Really unique worker who turns the most basic moves like a cravate, flying headscissor or hammerlock into nearfalls, and he can work all kinds of different matches. I'll have to dig way more into his back catalogue but right now Arai definitely feels like someone who deserves consideration.