December 28, 20213 yr comment_5971112 Black Terry. Other contenders are Brian Kendrick, Rush, LA Park, Hechicero, and Meiko Satomura. Looking back, it was an extremely weak year though.
December 28, 20213 yr comment_5971121 Okada had a dodgy Post-Wrestle Kingdom period with the Goto "under the waterfall" feud falling flat on its face and then getting overshadowed by Naito until the Summer but Okada had an excellent ride after that. The Marufuji matches are sublime, the Ishii match is one of the more acclaimed matches of the period, the 30 draw with Tanahashi. Gosh. Okada had a great run in 2016, and it got shot out of the water by his 2017.
December 28, 20213 yr comment_5971122 Actually, you're right, for whatever reason I seemed to remember Okada's legendary title reign being from 2016, when in fact most of it was in 2017 and only began in mid 2016. There you go. Still probably Okada though. Or Naito.
December 29, 20213 yr comment_5971135 Okada was the best by the end of the year, but from January to December it's either Omega or AJ and it's razor-thin between 'em.
January 4, 20223 yr comment_5971611 5 minutes ago, Loss said: Just asking, but ... Chris Hero? Was just thinking about this. The indies were really great in 2016 and especially the Evolve guys were on fire. Hero, ZSJ, Matt Riddle, Tim Thatcher. Hero especially was everywhere and killed it everywhere, except for his tag matches which are always at least 5 minutes too long, but his run as elder statesman of the indies ruled.
January 4, 20223 yr comment_5971613 Shibata had a killer NEVER Championship reign with great stiff matches against Ishii, some WOS-NJPW hybrid cool matches with ZSJ (helping him to achieve his peak in New Japan), both reDragon members, the Third Generation (gotta LOVE the first Nagata match the most), Riddle, Hero, giving EVIL his best matches, an amazing G1 match with Naito... A really, really strong year. Underrated WOTYC for 2016.
January 4, 20223 yr comment_5971618 A.J. or Chris Hero probably. Hero probably had the longer list of matches but A.J. arguably had higher peaks.
January 8, 20223 yr comment_5972208 I'd go with AJ Styles, thought that was about as great of a first year in WWE as you can have.
January 8, 20223 yr comment_5972218 On 1/4/2022 at 2:46 AM, Tetsujin said: Shibata had a killer NEVER Championship reign God I love the Kyle O'Reilly match during that run.
June 7, 20223 yr comment_5983173 On 12/29/2021 at 1:09 AM, kas said: Okada was the best by the end of the year, but from January to December it's either Omega or AJ and it's razor-thin between 'em. Changed my mind, it's Io Shirai.
June 7, 20223 yr comment_5983178 Strong year for plenty of wrestlers. Styles, Okada, Shirai, Hero, Trevor Lee, Gresham, Zack Sabre Jr. Also secretly a really great year for Mustafa Ali
July 15, 20223 yr comment_5985915 I'd go with Io Shirai as well. vs. Kairi Hojo (1/17, 9/3) vs. Mayu Iwatani (12/22)
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