I am extremely happy that LA Park made this list. Honestly, before votes came in, I was thinking he had no shot. Luckily I was wrong.

 

Just an all-time great brawler with out of control charisma. When you throw in his earlier work doing high spots and that fact he could get over in WCW as well as he did, he's something special. I'm glad others thought so too.

Positive: Really happy Kerry made the top 100. Too many great matches and feuds to not be on the list.

 

Negative: Now I'm mad I didn't vote for LA Park. He deserved it.

I have to get out of the Honorable Mention mindset. I keep getting upset that guys are falling from my list in the Top 100. I should be happy they are in the Top 100!!!!

I have to get out of the Honorable Mention mindset. I keep getting upset that guys are falling from my list in the Top 100. I should be happy they are in the Top 100!!!!

Especially for the guys who didn't make it in 2006.

I'm okay to be an outlier on this: I don't and have never seen the fuss over LA Park. The time I spent watching his matches for this project is time I'll never get back, and I blame Grimmas for it.

I'm okay to be an outlier on this: I don't and have never seen the fuss over LA Park. The time I spent watching his matches for this project is time I'll never get back, and I blame Grimmas for it.

You are welcome. I still don't see how you don't see his awesomeness.

Ikeda suffers from being pimped as a stiff machine. He is an asskicking machine, but he can also go on the mat, sell incredibly well from underneath, can incooperate junior elements and even comedy elements and is an excellent tag worker, like a japanese Tully Blanchard. All that and we know he was good from the get go and is still a good wrestler in 2016. So he has an excellent case even with so many if his matches not being taped.

 

It feels very weird that he only makes the Top 100 by a hair. His Top 20 matches stomp a lot of very well respected wrestlers.

 

 

So if he isn't a shootstyle guy, what style is he? I might check him out.

Battlarts and Futen are very much hybrid shoot style promotions. Shoot style is their base but they incorporate pro style moves in more realistic ways. Ikeda specifically is known for being probably the stiffest worker ever.

 

Battlearts reoccurred a lot on the lists of Childs, Chad and Charles, and clearly with him ranking #100 a lot of people are high on him, so I might watch some of this stuff when I start watching wrestling again.

 

Your description and what I've heard sounds vaguely promising, and I'm wondering if it's more accessible than the dryer-than-paint-1990-UWF type stuff I tried to watch whenever it was or than Volk Han etc.

 

 

It's more strike-based, more violent and yet goofier at times than a lot of the shootstyle you've sampled. So yes, I think you'd like it more.

Dean ranking Parka at 4 is lovely. I do wonder if there are people who voted for Parka because they remember him as the funny WCW jobber.

I see Parka and Nakamura as very similar guys in the sense that in a big match atmosphere, they can absolutely kill it to the point where you wonder why they don't do it every night. Both are incredibly charismatic too. Wondering now how high Nak will go mainly because he has worked New Japan.

Ikeda suffers from being pimped as a stiff machine. He is an asskicking machine, but he can also go on the mat, sell incredibly well from underneath, can incooperate junior elements and even comedy elements and is an excellent tag worker, like a japanese Tully Blanchard. All that and we know he was good from the get go and is still a good wrestler in 2016. So he has an excellent case even with so many if his matches not being taped.

 

It feels very weird that he only makes the Top 100 by a hair. His Top 20 matches stomp a lot of very well respected wrestlers.

 

He's one where I'm just happy he got into the top 100. I think it's now clear that a lot of voters just never got to BattlArts, shootstyle, WOS, etc. So for those guys to make the list while only appearing on 1/3 or so of ballots feels like at least a modest victory.

Didn't have LA Park. Not fond of the WCW comedy stuff, and initially left a little cold by the other stuff I've seen (both pre and mainly post WCW). But I will definetely give him another chance due to his ranking here.

 

Chicana I had at #72. What I've seen has been great. Hope I can find more :-)

Hey, no one from my list yet !

 

Glad we got rid of Kerry already. Overrated worker. His great matches aren't that great, except Jumbo's, which is an all-time great performance by Tsuruta. The claw is dumb as fuck. And all the Von Erich throw awkard looking punches. Hey, actually, John Cena is the best Kerry von Erich ever !

Kerry is like the Bulldog to me, a talented piece of luggage. Except Bulldog had way more raw talent.

Thanks to Tim again for reminded me that I forgot Chicana. Glad to see not too many others forgot about him, like I did. Shocking to see such a short discussion thread on him, though.

I wasn't particularly thinking of Chicana when I put my list together, but then I looked over my rankings for the lucha set, and he had a bunch of top end stuff. Kinda reminded me just how good he was on that set. He ended up my 44.

Ikeda suffers from being pimped as a stiff machine. He is an asskicking machine, but he can also go on the mat, sell incredibly well from underneath, can incooperate junior elements and even comedy elements and is an excellent tag worker, like a japanese Tully Blanchard. All that and we know he was good from the get go and is still a good wrestler in 2016. So he has an excellent case even with so many if his matches not being taped.

 

This.

Good to see Ikeda on the list, had him at 18. Would be nice to see Ishikawa in the top 50.

PWO GWE Project - The Matches

 

YouTube Playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLoeBY9gVL9d13ytshbXVg_EnCzjHVPUOt

 

 

Outstanding. Thank you so much for this.

Fuck man, I agree with the sentiment that Ikeda making it into the top 100 is a pretty outstanding achievement, but him and Virus dropping back to back straight away might be the biggest gut punch of the whole countdown so far (though, on the brighter side, Virus jumping up about about 260 spots from 2006 is awesome as well).

 

Ikeda was my #18 and the first guy from my top 30 to drop. I know he's stiff as a bastard, but that's certainly not the only thing he has going for him (basically agree with everything Jetlag said) and I don't really get the idea that he used the stiffness as a crutch of some kind. Him and Ishikawa is probably one of my top three pairings in wrestling history.

 

Park, Chicana and Virus were my 60, 39 and 36, respectively. I wanted to vote Chicana sky high, but I couldn't really justify it without more footage. Then again, what we have is phenomenal. Might be the best ever at taking an absolute shit-kicking, selling that shit-kicking like death, and milking it for absolutely everything it's worth before making the perfectly timed comeback. Shit, maybe 39 is too low.

 

That LA Park picture in the countdown thread is utterly spectacular, btw.

Park on over 70 lists is great. Thought he would have ranked a little bit higher for some reason but Top 100 ever makes my heart warm.

Can definitely see the bottom 50 being dense with luchadors, shoot style workers and women while the bulk of the top 50 is made up of your usual Japanese/American suspects. We'll see I guess.

Virus is the master of what I think of as juniors style lucha, which has at this point totally taken over. No one comes close to working that version of lucha as well as Virus. And he can work the mat with the best of the old masters too. Had him at 35. If he had more title matches on tape I can't imagine him not being a top 20 candidate.

Chicana was someone I didn't really get until I saw the MS-1 match, then it was like a train hit me. Might be the best Lucha brawler I've ever seen, and as far as fired up baby faces go, Parv would go crazy about him.

I screwed up and didn't save the final edition of my list. I thought I had Destroyer at 19 would have been good for high vote. Damn last minute changes. Mentioned before I weighed in ring character and ability to do timely comedy highly. Destroyer was a real stand out there. Also had votes in for Virus and LA Park. Interesting that the 6 that have been revealed so far only had 3 top 10 votes between them. Must have been consistent names up at the top.

Dean ranking Parka at 4 is lovely. I do wonder if there are people who voted for Parka because they remember him as the funny WCW jobber.

That's why I voted for him