I've got Mysterio in the GoAT range and Bryan back 20 spots. Maybe a decade removed I'll look back at Daniel's WWE run more fondly but as of now the stuff of his that speaks the most to me are some of his ROH feuds (Morishima, Nigel, Homicide) whereas Mysterio has lucha, small but fun run in ECW, and nearly two decades of very strong WCW/WWE output where (when healthy) he was always one of the best pound for pound guys on the planet.

I've got both guys in my top 10, but Bryan is on the bubble of dropping into the teens, whilst Rey was a #1 contender at one point, and will be top 3. Rey had an elite career, and was a weekly guaranteed good TV match for at least 10 years.

If Rey hadn't gone to the WWE, I wonder how he would've been remembered in comparison to his contemporaries such as Psicosis, Sasuke and Ultimo Dragon. His WWE run makes up such a huge part of his case that the consensus has to lean toward his WWE work being proof positive of his greatness. I can see how that might bug people, though, especially fans who valued him for his athleticism and high spots and not his selling and storytelling.

Even back around 1999-ish, I think Rey was already regarded by many people as being the best highspot artist in the world, with only Liger as any real competition, and maybe Eddy/Benoit if you counted them. Even among WCW's overstuffed cruiserweight division full of really good workers, Mysterio stood out as being a step above pretty much everyone else.

 

But I do think it's true that his WWE run really cemented his legacy, since it gave him a MUCH wider variety of different stuff to do and different opponents to work with and he consistently succeeded with pretty much everything they ever let him try. (For the record, his abysmally-booked championship run doesn't count as genuinely letting him try anything.) The only time WCW ever let Rey out of the cruiserweight ghetto was in his feud with Nash, and we all know how that went.

It bugs me that Liger was ever regarded as a "highspot artist" because it's not really how he worked his matches. But it's true that he was, and that's a different topic anyway.

I'm watching Joshi today and spending most of my time on watching not typing at this point. That said I would be interested to hear what people would think about adding Akiyama to this discussion from the perspective of top guys of this millennium so far.