FUJIWARASMIRK

The 2026 Greatest Wrestler Ever poll is upon us. If you’re unaware, the GWE poll is one where you’re asked to name who you think the 100 greatest wrestlers are based on available footage and primarily focusing on in-ring work. This poll takes place every 10 years and this is the third such iteration, the first happening in 2006 on the now defunct Smarkschoice forum and the second happening in 2016 on the prowrestlingonly.com forum.

I found out about this poll a few years ago and decided I wanted to participate in it. I recently submitted my ballot, and this post will highlight everyone on my list on my ballot from 100-1 with a (relatively) brief explanation of why I chose to vote for them.

A few disclaimers:

Firstly, I do not pretend to be the most knowledgeable wrestling fan ever. I have an incredible amount of blind spots, as most of us do, and I don’t want people to come away with the idea that I think my list is definitive or all-encompassing. This is merely a snapshot into my wrestling viewing and opinions at this moment in time, and I’ll be happy to reflect on it in 2036.

Secondly, there will be praise for bad people on this list. I do not want this to be misinterpreted as a defense of their out of the ring actions. I did not approach this project with a moral lens, though I’m sure some of that seeped into my rankings in the end, but that’s no disrespect to anyone who did. To me, this list is about the 100 greatest wrestlers ever, not the 100 greatest people to ever wrestle, and my list reflects that mentality.

With all that being said, let’s start with my final 10 cuts before getting into the list proper.

HONORABLE MENTIONS (Alphabetical):

• Bruno Sammartino
• Dynamite Kansai
• Jackie Sato
• Lou Thesz
• Perro Aguayo
• Roderick Strong
• Shinsuke Nakamura
• Sting
• WALTER
• Yoshihiro Tajiri

100. JEFF HARDY

In this project, there’s this idea of a “vanity 100”. A wrestler that probably is not one of the 100 greatest wrestlers ever to you, but you have such a special attachment to that you can’t find it in you to leave them off. Do I think, if looking at this thing dispassionately, that Jeff Hardy is a better wrestler than any of the 10 names in the honorable mentions section? Not really. Do I think Jeff was great enough to be my vanity 100, though? You bet your ass I do.

For context, I’m a 2000s kid. Jeff Hardy was my first favorite wrestler. He won the WWE title on my birthday. I probably cried when CM Punk “retired” him on SmackDown because I had no idea what TNA was at the time. This isn’t just a case of intense nostalgia, though, because in revisiting his work in the 2000s, it holds up very well. Everyone knows he’s a bump freak (a generationally great one, at that), and they remember the stunt show matches which maybe give a warped perception of his talent, but Jeff Hardy was one of the most sympathetic babyfaces of the 2000s. The Undertaker ladder match on TV stands out specifically because of Jeff’s selling as a hopeless underdog and there’s performances like that littered through that first WWF/E run. When he comes back, though, he’s matured into an even stronger worker, a really great traditional tag worker when paired back with his brother Matt in 2006 and a strong underdog flinging himself into every single bit of offense without a single care to his well-being. He was Darby Allin before Darby Allin, with even the same ability to routinely get good results out of bad workers like Triple H. He’ll always be the guy that got me into this dumb, beautiful sport, and that’s good enough for me to put him at 100.

Recommended Matches:

• w/ Matt Hardy vs. The Dudley Boyz (WWF, 1/23/00)
• vs. The Undertaker (WWE, 7/1/02)
• vs. Umaga (WWE, 7/22/07)
• vs. Randy Orton (WWE, 1/27/08)
• vs. CM Punk (WWE, 8/28/09)

99. GRAN HAMADA

I knew Gran Hamada was probably making my list when I watched him on mid-90s NJPW undercards and he was keeping up with juniors 20 years younger than him, and even outworking them on some occasions. The peak work is really great, both in Mexico and Japan, and I can’t wait to get into more of it over the course of exploring the 1980s, but it’s that elder statesman run in NJPW and in those multiman Michinoku Pro tags that really endeared the guy to me. Add onto that the fact that he’s the godfather of lucharesu, and he feels like someone very much worthy of inclusion on a list like this.

Recommended Matches:

• vs. Babe Face (NJPW, 4/5/79)
• vs. Tiger Mask (NJPW, 11/5/81)
• vs. Centurion Negro (UWA, 2/14/82)
• vs. Perro Aguayo (UWF, 4/11/84)
• vs. Shinjiro Otani (NJPW, 2/19/95)

98: MASANOBU FUCHI

What a bastard Masa Fuchi was. You’ve read glimpses of the monster that the man would become in All Japan six man tags on this blog, but it really cannot be overstated how much the man was able to shine in the ring with, at any point, 5 of the most talented wrestlers ever. There’s something about those tags that brought the evil out of the man, only made worse when across from Tsuyoshi Kikuchi. His career isn’t one for absurd peaks or anything like that, but if you have an affinity for the era he made the most impact in and the types of performances he gave in those matches, it’s hard to leave a guy like him off.

Recommended Matches:

• w/ Jumbo Tsuruta & Akira Taue vs. Super Generation Army (AJPW, 10/19/90)
• w/ Jumbo Tsuruta & Akira Taue vs. Super Generation Army (AJPW, 4/20/91)
• vs. Tsuyoshi Kikuchi (AJPW, 2/28/93)
• vs. Toshiaki Kawada (AJPW, 7/1/00)
• w/ Toshiaki Kawada vs. Yuji Nagata/Takashi Iizuka (NJPW, 12/14/00)

97: TSUYOSHI KIKUCHI

It’s only right that they end up back to back.

Kikuchi, for a solid 3-4 year stretch from 1990-93, was the best babyface on the planet. Not just in All Japan, the entire world. The guy would take hellacious beatings from Fuchi and Jumbo, and later Kawada and Taue, and keep getting right back up to throw a defiant elbow at them. For a wrestler that was never considered a huge star, you may never hear a hotter crowd than the one in Sendai when he and Kobashi win the All Asia Tag Titles from the Can-Ams. Unfortunately, he really began winding down after 1993, an understandable result given how much abuse his body had been put through week after week on these tours. Yet, even post-peak, he has a career resurgence in NOAH, not only one of the most reliable guys in the entire promotion in its early years but a genuinely great wrestler once more in 2002 defending his promotion against the invading NJPW juniors led by Jushin Thunder Liger. It’s one of my favorite comeback narratives in the sport, and it cemented him a spot on my list.

Recommended Matches:

• w/ Mitsuharu Misawa/Toshiaki Kawada vs. Jumbo Tsuruta/Masa Fuchi/Akira Taue (AJPW, 8/18/90)
• vs. Jumbo Tsuruta (AJPW, 3/22/92) 
• w/ Kenta Kobashi vs. Can-Am Express (AJPW, 5/25/92)
• vs. Masanobu Fuchi (AJPW, 9/4/91)
• w/ Yoshinobu Kanemaru vs. Jushin Thunder Liger/Wataru Inoue (NOAH, 2/17/02)

96: LA FIERA

Fiera’s a luchador that I feel goes under the radar for some in favor of bigger names, but at his peak he was just as good as any of them. Phenomenal and gritty brawler, could go on the mat as well, great performances both as a rudo and tecnico, stands out in tags, trios and singles matches, can work both title matches and apuestas matches, you name it. Probably flies under the radar compared to your Santito’s and Casas’s, but he was a damn great wrestler at his best.

Recommended Matches:

• w/ Mocho Cota/Sangre Chicana vs. Atlantis/Rayo de Jalisco Jr./Cien Caras (EMLL, 12/16/83)
• vs. Babe Face (EMLL, 8/15/86)
• vs. Jerry Estrada (EMLL, 1/23/91)
• vs. Atlantis (CMLL, 4/3/92)
• vs. Negro Casas (CMLL, 10/1/93)

95: OSAMU NISHIMURA

Nish was such a singular worker. You might not think of him in those terms, the quiet and understated worker that he was, but that’s precisely the point: the fact that he was such a modest and unassuming guy really stood out in a company like New Japan filled with brazen and extroverted characters like Chono, Tenzan, Nakanishi, Nagata, and Sasaki, among others. Additionally, he might be the most accurate answer to what one might call a “throwback wrestler”, feeling like a fusion of trainers Dory Funk Jr. and Tatsumi Fujinami in his style. This, too, made him feel anachronous in the company he resided, throwing out European uppercuts and dragon screw leg whips when all his peers were focusing on meaty lariats and huge bombs. This may cause him to slip through the cracks for some, but make no mistake, Nishimura was one of the best wrestlers of the 2000s, continued being great well into the 2010s, and crafted some of the best and most interesting performances you’ll ever see. He’s one of my guys, and I hope reading this causes at least one of you to give him a chance. A true 1 of 1.

Recommended Matches:

• w/ Manabu Nakanishi vs. Masahiro Chono/Hiroyoshi Tenzan (NJPW, 6/5/02)
• vs. Yoshihiro Takayama (NJPW, 8/10/02)
• vs. Bas Rutten (NJPW, 10/14/02)
• vs. Jun Akiyama (NJPW, 8/11/02)
• vs. Tatsumi Fujinami (MUGA, 9/25/06)

94: KATSUYORI SHIBATA

I understand the instinct to overrated Shibata, I really do. He’s one of the coolest wrestlers to ever live, has a cult classic with Akiyama as a baby that even your grandmother could love (hi Egg), and his performance in the Okada title match is maybe the best performance in the history of wrestling. I get it.

With that being said, calm down.

It’s not an especially long run for The Wrestler. His 2000s is cut short by an excursion to MMA. He returns to New Japan in 2012, and it ends in 2017 with the aforementioned Okada match. It’s not been until recently that he’s returned to regular in-ring action in AEW and Ring of Honor. There just isn’t a whole lot to his case from a longevity standpoint.

Even with that, I mean, come on. The guy fucking ruled. Incredible striker (chops, kicks, elbows, you name it, he was excellent at them), awesome bully yet really great as an underdog as well. Sneakily underrated tag worker too; I haven’t seen the stuff teaming with KENTA, but I really love the Laughter7 run with old man Sakuraba. Additionally, his AEW run has actually been a net positive for his case; he’s not who he was before they took his brain out surgically, of course, but he’s not phoning it in in the states like his fellow Muskeeter Nakamura, and he’s adapted well to the house style. In the end, no matter who he faced, from Fujita to Tanahashi to Ishii to Omega to Naito, Katsuyori Shibata was gonna wrestle his way, and that was gonna involve incredibly hard hitting action and more than a little disrespect thrown in for good measure.

Recommended Matches:

• vs. Kazuyuki Fujita (NJPW, 7/19/04)
• vs. Jun Akiyama (WRESTLE-1, 8/4/05)
• vs. Tomohiro Ishii (NJPW, 8/4/13)
• vs. Hiroshi Tanahashi (NJPW, 8/11/13)
• vs. Kazuchika Okada (NJPW, 4/9/17)

93: LARRY ZBYSZKO

Larry Z just does it for me, man. My first exposure of him was through his run in WCW, both in the larger Dangerous Alliance stable as well as the individual team with Arn as the Enforcers. I thought he was awesome then in his 40s, some imagine my surprise how fucking good he was over a decade prior in 1980! He’s truly one of the biggest beneficiaries of the 1980 project for me, crafting an amazing series with former friend and mentor Bruno Sammartino over the year as well as challenging for the WWF title late in the year in an excellent match with Backlund. He was one of the best heels of his era, perhaps the best heel ever at just getting his ass kicked up and down a wrestling ring if you watch the AWA footage especially.

The thing about the AWA work, though, is that there’s not a ton of footage to comb through compared to his contemporaries. What is available isn’t especially long, for the most part. So as much as I love heel Larry from 1980-92, it’s his babyface work in 1994 challenging Regal for the WCW World Television Title both on PPV and television that really put him over the edge for me. Their series is genuinely fantastic and worth looking into, and an excellent feather in Zbyszko’s cap that he was able to reverse engineer a run like that well into his 40s after being a bad guy for so long. Nobody like him in the game of human chess.

Recommended Matches:

• vs. Bruno Sammartino (WWF, 3/24/80)
• vs. Bob Backlund (WWF, 10/11/80)
• vs. Nick Bockwinkel (AWA, 7/11/87)
• vs. Masa Saito (AWA, 4/8/90)
• vs. Lord Steven Regal (WCW, 5/28/94)

92: FUERZA GUERRERA

Does he have the immense longevity as a top-flight wrestler as of some of his Mexican contemporaries? Maybe not. But Fuerza is one of the most talented luchadores ever, a God-tier stooge yet capable of being really mean and cruel at the drop of a hat (that Spinebuster/ball shot spot never gets old, my God). I can’t think of a single trios match from the mid-1980s to around 1995 that wasn’t made better by his inclusion in it, be it through his insane bumping for the tecnicos or his excellent punches. A king of commitment to the bit, minute-for-minute one of the most entertaining wrestlers in history.

Recommended Matches:

• vs. Negro Casas (WWA, 9/20/86)
• vs. El Pantera (EMLL, 5/4/90)
• vs. Octagon (EMLL, 11/3/91)
• w/ Blue Panther Pentagon & Psicosis vs. El Hijo del Santo/La Parka/Octagon/Rey Misterio Jr (AAA, 6/18/95)
• w/ Blue Panther vs. El Dandy/La Fiera (CMLL, 12/1/95)

91: HIROSHI HASE

A picture of consistency. He doesn’t have the same peaks as his 90’s New Japan contemporaries like Muto or Chono, but he also doesn’t have anywhere near their lows. He was the second best guy on the roster for like 5 years, and second best is not anything to sniff at when you consider who number one is. Remarkable bleeder, great offensive repertoire, could really go on the mat, excelled in tags, could work in both a small room and a big arena, Hase was one of the most reliable talents in Japan in the 90s regardless of promotion.

Recommended Matches:

• vs. The Great Muta (NJPW, 9/14/90)
• w/ Kensuke Sasaki vs. Keiji Muto/Masahiro Chono (NJPW, 11/1/90)
• vs. Masahiro Chono (NJPW, 8/6/93)
• vs. Shinya Hashimoto (NJPW, 12/13/94)
• vs. Jun Akiyama (AJPW, 5/1/98)

90: BOB BACKLUND

Backlund is a guy that looks like a goof on first impression, but then you watch him and he just kicks all types of ass. Maybe a little too much, according to some, but I’ve never felt his match structure was overly excessive. The guy really knew how to make his big matches feel like monumental fights; the Patera Texas Death Match in 1980 is a great example of this, one of the best matches of the year and it sticks out in the mind in large part due to Backlund’s performance. I think it’s somewhat valid to ask if he was the best guy in his feuds, but think about all the feuds he had: Stan Hansen, Ken Patera, Larry Zbyszko, Sgt. Slaughter, Buddy Rose, Greg Valentine, Iron Sheik, etc. All feuds with great matches in them, in large part due to the work he put in to making them excel. The return run in 1993-95 WWF is very much a feather in his cap as well, having a great series with Bret past the point that many probably had written him off. Not quite my favorite WWE ace, and not someone that I adore on an emotional level, but an undeniable figure all the same.

Recommended Matches:

• vs. Pat Patterson (WWF, 9/24/79)
• vs. Ken Patera (WWF, 5/19/80)
• vs. Sgt. Slaughter (WWF, 1/10/81)
• vs. Buddy Rose (WWF, 8/30/82)
• vs. Bret Hart (WWF, 6/12/93)

89: ATLANTIS

If there’s a dictionary with the word “tecnico” in it, Atlantis’s picture should probably be attached to it. The guy was the perfect representation of the role for close to 30 years, becoming an icon of lucha libre along the way. His dives are gorgeous, and as shown by his two singles matches with Blue Panther, he was adept as a matworker even if he didn’t always get to showcase it. Being one half of arguably the greatest match not just in lucha history, but wrestling period, certainly adds a ton to Atlantis’s case too. He may not be the most skilled luchador there’s ever been, but when you have great matches in four different decades, that stuff has a way of seeming unimportant.

Recommended Matches:

• vs. Blue Panther (EMLL, 8/9/91)
• vs. Blue Panther (CMLL, 12/5/97)
• vs. Villano III (CMLL, 3/17/00)
• vs. Ultimo Guerrero (CMLL, 9/19/14)
• vs. La Sombra (CMLL, 9/18/15)

88: TULLY BLANCHARD

Tully Blanchard was a dick. In a stable that included peak Ric Flair, it takes a lot for you to be the most hateable guy in The Four Horsemen, and Tully accomplished that seemingly with ease. It was only more enraging that, when he got in the ring, he was just as good as he thought he was, and he knew it. When you really get into watching his work, there’s nothing more cathartic than watching Magnum TA make him beg for mercy, someone finally knocking this asshole down a peg, but of course it never lasts. He’ll just smile that smug smile of his the next week and it’ll only serve to infuriate you even more. Even with the limited longevity, one of the best heels of his era with a ton of greatness to his name in both singles matches against Dusty, Magnum, and Ron Garvin as wel as tags with Arn Anderson in Jim Crockett and WWF.

Recommended Matches:

• vs. Ricky Steamboat (JCP, 11/22/84)
• vs. Dusty Rhodes (JCP, 7/6/85)
• vs. Magnum TA (JCP, 11/28/85)
• vs. Ron Garvin (JCP, 7/5/86)
• War Games (JCP, 7/4/87)

87: CHRIS HERO

An incredibly confounding wrestler.

The thing about Hero is that he’s maybe the most divisive wrestler of his generation; for a list like this, a lot of people will have him extraordinarily high and a lot of people wouldn’t even consider him. And I understand both perspectives. It wasn’t until recently that I started seriously considering him for my list, and ultimately I felt I kinda had to have him on, for my tastes. I acknowledge the bad for sure; the phrase “self-indulgent” has been thrown out for a couple workers during this process, and I can’t think of anyone it would fit more than Hero at his absolute worst. Part of that is being a young guy thrown to the wolves, so to speak, but it still happened and it still hampers his case for me. The peaks, however, are so goddamn great. The PWG work holds up incredibly well, being a great bully to the likes of Tozawa and Generico. Kings of Wrestling were a great, great tag team in their second run. The post-WWE run, while probably overrated at this point, still boasts incredible matches with the likes of Zack Sabre Jr., Ishii and Thatcher, among others. This is to say nothing of his great pre-2010s work, especially against Eddie Kingston in one of if not the greatest rivalry in the history of the American independents. He’s far from perfect, but none of our heroes are, are they?

Recommended Matches:

• vs. Ian Rotten (IWA Mid-South, 5/2/02)
• vs. Eddie Kingston (CZW, 4/7/07)
• vs. Low Ki (PWG, 11/2/08)
• vs. Akira Tozawa (PWG, 9/5/10)
• vs. Timothy Thatcher (WWN 3/28/15)

86: MARK BRISCOE

How fucking depressing is it that his brother had to die for Mark Briscoe to get the recognition he deserved on a national spotlight?

The Briscoes are, in my eyes, the greatest tag team ever. They could brawl with the best of them while still retaining that incredible workrate that allowed them to go toe to toe with the best teams across North America and Japan for 20+ years. Mark didn’t have the raw aura of his older brother, but what he did have going for him was a lunatic’s mindset, not afraid to take the most insane bumps you’ve ever seen for the love of the game. He developed into an incredible hot tag, so great that even the guy slowly becoming the star in the biggest wrestling company on earth arguably took from him to shoot his way into superstardom.

This post-Briscoes run for Mark has really been incredible, and a clear indicator of why he’s one of the best to ever do it. The emotional catharsis of his long-overdue ROH title win over Eddie Kingston, the insane match and bladejob against Roderick Strong, the consistently great matches in a never-ending feud with a great but flawed Kyle Fletcher, the Ricochet matches. It’s such an impressive peak as a guy you could reasonably say was never thought of as a singles wrestler, stepping up as one of the best wrestlers in the entire world. God only knows how long he still plans on going, but as long as he’s on television I know I can count on him to deliver week in and week out until the wheels fall off.

Recommended Matches:

• w/ Jay Briscoe vs. Samoa Joe/AJ Styles (ROH, 11/28/03)
• w/ Jay Briscoe vs. Kevin Steen/El Generico (ROH, 9/15/07)
• w/ Jay Briscoe vs. FTR (ROH, 4/1/22) 
• vs. Eddie Kingston (ROH, 4/5/24)
• vs. Roderick Strong (ROH, 7/26/24)

85: JAY BRISCOE

The better Briscoe Brother.

Mark has bridged the gap in my mind in recent years, but it’s still Jay for me, man. He projects such a violent aura that makes it so easy to get into his work, and he’s amazing on both sides of the spectrum as a heel or face. In a year where Eddie Guerrero tapped into one of the grossest bladejobs that’s ever been seen, Jay genuinely might have topped him with the one in the Joe cage match two months prior, and his performance in that match is fucking breathtaking to behold. In general, he’s maybe the best bleeder in the history of independent wrestling. He spent over two decades on this earth wrestling with his heart on his sleeve, never failing to give 100%, and in the process contributing heavily to the greatest tag team of all time. His singles run in the mid-2010s was awesome, getting great work out of the likes of Kevin Steen, Adam Cole, Jay Lethal and even a baby Hangman Page.

Jay Briscoe was one of the most compelling workers of the century, and the wrestling world–the fans, the workers that knew him, and the landscape in general–has dearly missed him since his passing.

Recommended Matches:

• vs. Samoa Joe (ROH, 3/13/04)
• w/ Mark Briscoe vs. Kevin Steen/El Generico (ROH, 8/10/07
• vs. Roderick Strong (ROH, 1/15/11)
• w/ Mark Briscoe vs. All-Night Express (ROH, 4/12/11)
• w/ Mark Briscoe vs. FTR (ROH, 12/10/22)

84: PIRATA MORGAN

Speaking of great bleeders.

Pirata Morgan, at his peak, was fucking unbelievable. One of the meanest and most violent rudos in history, known for bloodying up a tecnico, sucking on the wound, and then spitting the blood into the air like some sort of vampire. One of the best brawlers in wrestling history, a wrestling match was always more dangerous and hostile with him around. Los Infernales was never better than when he was a part of the group, and he was at worst the second best member in the mid to late 80s. Los Bucaneros in all iterations were awesome, showcasing Morgan’s ability to lead a trio against the best tecnicos in EMLL at the time. There’s such a distinct viscerality to Pirata Morgan’s brand of violence that it’s hard not to love him despite how rotten to his core the man was. Short peak, but what a peak it was.

Recommended Matches:

• w/ El Satanico & MS-1 vs. El Egipcio/El Faraon/La Fiera (EMLL, 3/29/85)
• vs. El Dandy (EMLL, 9/23/88)
• w/ Hombre Bala & El Verdugo vs. Atlantis/Ringo Mendoza/Angel Azteca (EMLL, 3/88)
• w/ El Satanico & MS-1 vs. Los Brazos (CMLL, 11/24/91)
• vs. Masakre (CMLL, 2/28/92)

83: SHINOBU KANDORI

You know, everyone talks about how the woman Kandori’s career is inevitably tied to had one of the greatest peaks ever…motherfucker, when are we gonna start talking about Kandori’s peak? In the mid-to-late 90s Kandori was a force to be reckoned with, one of the most dynamic joshi workers in history and a true asskicker. She took great pleasure in destroying the women in her path in such different ways, from bloodying up Akira Hokuto in their immortalized Dream Slam match, to hanging Megumi Kudo above a balcony, to just plain old beating the dog shit out of Yumiko Hotta. This is, of course, to say nothing of her mat skills, which she excelled at as a former judoka and trainee of Yoshiaki Fujiwara. One of the greatest forces of nature wrestling has ever seen, and I will always regret that we never saw a singles match between her and Aja Kong in their respective primes.

Recommended Matches:

• w/ Eagle Sawai vs. Aja Kong/Akira Hokuto (AJW, 4/11/93)
• vs. Akira Hokuto (AJW, 12/6/93)
• vs. Megumi Kudo (LLPW, 1/5/97)
• vs. Yumiko Hotta (LLPW, 3/21/98)
• vs. Manami Toyota (AJW, 8/23/98)

82: HARASHIMA

If you’re a longevity guy, and you like what HARASHIMA brings to the table, then his case is fairly undeniable. To this day, the man is still fucking great and capable of having incredible matches with the best on the DDT roster. When you consider the fact that he’s been doing this for the better part of 15 years, with good stuff going beyond that, it’s an incredibly impressive resume. Really good worker mechanically, a damn good striker as well, and has an impeccable eye for match structure that makes his work at his peak stand out. DDT’s not as big as NJPW, but it’s very arguable HARASHIMA was the best ace in all of Japan in the 2010s.

Recommended Matches:

• vs. Dick Togo (DDT, 2/27/11)
• vs. KUDO (DDT, 5/31/15)
• vs. Isami Kodaka (DDT, 3/21/16)
• vs. Shuji Ishikawa (DDT, 12/4/16)
• vs. Yuji Okabayashi (DDT, 11/21/21)

81: FIT FINLAY

Finlay just rules, plain and simple. I’m not overly familiar with his work in Joint Promotions, but his work in the early 80s I’ve seen is strong and when he shifts into the gimmick later into his run in Europe, the matches are still enjoyable even with the shtick. I’m also not super familiar with the WCW work, as someone still in the late 1997, but the Regal matches are so great, mean, clubbering and violent just as you’d expect. What really got him this high for me was the WWE run, where this old man shows up and immediately becomes one of the best, most consistent guys on the entire roster for years, and the post-fed Indie run, where he smashes into the likes of Sami Callihan and TAJIRI with reckless aplomb. It’s such a strange career path, but an awesome one all the same, and you’re unlikely to find a guy as compelling to watch than Finlay at his best.

Recommended Matches:

• vs. Young David (JP, 3/13/82)
• vs. Lord Steven Regal (WCW, 3/24/96)
• vs. Chris Benoit (WWE, 5/5/06)
• vs. Matt Hardy (WWE, 6/22/07)
• vs. Sami Callihan (EVOLVE, 7/26/11)

80: EDDIE KINGSTON

Eddie’s a guy that I first got exposed to through AEW television, but he immediately makes such an impact on you regardless of where you find him. He’s the ultimate heart on his sleeve wrestler, managing to convey emotion in a wrestling ring like no one else (usually rage, which is always incredible). He’s one of the great indie workers of a generation; in an era where guys like Bryan, Punk, Generico, Steen, etc. all made it big in WWE, and even people like vaunted rival Chris Hero had a run or two in the top wrestling promotion, Kingston was the one grinding on indie shows for the better part of twenty years before catching his big break on national television, and through all that time he’s never once not felt like the authentic and genuine article. One of the best sellers of all time, especially when selling a leg like in his beautiful CHIKARA Grand Title win. At his best, up there with the greatest at making a match feel like a gritty, nasty fight instead of mere performance. Not that it overtly matters for a list like this, but King’s one of the few genuinely great promos we have left in the business, too, and it speaks to how real he’s always felt.

Recommended Matches:

• vs. Chris Hero (IWA Mid-South, 9/29/07)
• vs. Fire Ant (CHIKARA, 9/18/11)
• vs. Mike Quackenbush (CHIKARA, 11/13/11)
• vs. Claudio Castagnoli (ROH, 3/31/23)
• vs. Bryan Danielson (AEW, 12/27/23)

79: JON MOXLEY

It might sound like cheap praise to call someone the best wrestler of the 2020s, the worst decade for in-ring competition to date, but Mox stands out head and shoulders above the rest of the field. His pre-WWE work is overall probably his weakest run, but there’s still great work to be found against the likes of Brain Damage in CZW or Jimmy Jacobs in DGUSA. The FCW work against mentor William Regal is incredible. The Shield is the defining stable of an entire generation, and Mox was the lynchpin of the operation both literally and figuratively. The post-Shield WWE stuff is hit or miss, mostly due to the company’s incompetence, but the hits are really great all the same. It’s this post-fed run that’s the stuff of legend, though, coming out guns blazing against Juice Robinson in New Japan and rarely ever letting his foot off the gas whether it be in Japan, American television, American indies, or even Mexico recently. It might sound hyperbolic, but no one’s come closer to capturing the aura of Stone Cold at his zenith like Mox has.

Recommended Matches:

• vs. Jimmy Jacobs (DGUSA, 10/29/10)
• vs. William Regal (FCW, 11/6/11)
• vs. AJ Styles (WWE, 9/11/16) 
• vs. CM Punk (AEW, 9/4/22)
• vs. Orange Cassidy (AEW, 9/3/23)

78: YUJI NAGATA

They don’t call him Mr. IWGP for nothing.

For over a decade, Nagata was the ideal big match guy. Great striker, throwing the loudest kicks you’ve ever heard directly into his opponent’s chests, but could dish out bombs with the biggest giants in the business too. An intensity that few other heavyweight main eventers could match both at the time and in general, which made his clashes with the likes of Fujita and Takayama feel like titanic struggles and matches with would-be invaders like Murakami feel like urgent fights over the spirit of the company. He was a phenomenal New Japan ace, a great invading heel in NOAH, and an excellent veteran gatekeeper for the likes of Tanahashi, Ishii, Shibata, and others.

Recommended Matches:

• vs. Kazuyuki Fujita (NJPW, 10/14/02
• vs. Kazunari Murakami (NJPW, 12/10/02)
• vs. Kensuke Sasaki (NJPW, 1/4/04)
• vs. Hiroshi Tanahashi (NJPW, 4/13/07)
• vs. Tomohiro Ishii (NJPW, 11/22/11)

77: ANDRE THE GIANT

When we talk about forces of nature, there’s no way you can’t mention Andre. He had an aura that somehow matched, if not surpassed, his natural size, and it served every single one of his matches. When he was near his athletic peak in the 70s, he was a genuine sight to behold, a marvel of both size and athleticism charging at whoever was in front of him. As he got older and more broken down, his mind refused to fail him, often crafting great and thoughtful performances that made up for his decline in athletic gifts, and this lasted well into the tail-end of his career. For a guy his size, he was a phenomenal seller too, portraying the wounded animal in danger to perfection as both a heel and a babyface. He’s got his fair shair of misses, it’s true, but it’s easy for me to disregard them when he was that great at his peak.

Recommended Matches:

• vs. Antonio Inoki (NJPW, 10/7/76)
• vs. Harley Race (Houston, 1/7/79)
• vs. Stan Hansen (NJPW, 9/23/81)
• vs. Killer Khan (NJPW, 4/1/82)
• vs. Hulk Hogan (WWF, 3/29/87)

76: BROCK LESNAR

I’ll keep this one relatively brief.

Lesnar is simply one of the best big match wrestlers ever. Not every match was a hit, but the hits are literally some of the best matches in wrestling history. He broke the rules of what a WWE main event match should look like as soon as he came back for the first Cena match. He’s one of the best bullies the sport’s ever seen, a phenomenal seller, especially of body parts, and was a really great TV guy in his first WWE run. Longevity hurts him, but it’s mostly a blemish in an otherwise great in-ring career.

Recommended Matches:

• vs. The Undertaker (WWE, 10/20/02)
• vs. Rey Mysterio (WWE, 12/11/03)
• vs. John Cena (WWE, 4/29/12)
• vs. CM Punk (WWE, 8/18/13)
• vs. Roman Reigns (WWE. 3/29/15)

75: ANTONIO INOKI

There was a time when I didn’t really consider ranking Inoki. From my vantage point, he was a very inconsistent worker in the early 80s, and you could flip a coin on whether a not a match he was in would be worthwhile or a total drag to get through. It wasn’t until I went back and watched some of his JWA work as well as him in those early years of New Japan that I really came around on the guy, and I think him cracking my top 75 should be proof enough of how highly I view that work. I struggle to think of any Japanese ace that could match his fiery disposition, even before he had the aura of Being Antonio Inoki, the will to win while staring danger directly in the face. You can see it in all stages of his career, from the technical masterpieces with Jack Brisco and Dory Funk Jr. in the early 70s to the big, dramatic coda to the Vader feud in the 1/4/96 Dome show. At his peak, he was one of the most engaging technical wrestlers the sport has ever seen, going to battle on the mat with the best of his era like Billy Robinson. In the last years of him as a full-time worker in the 1980s, he was incredible taking on proteges like Fujiwara and Fujinami. The fun of this process is that someone could say I’m underrating Inoki by only putting him at 75, and in a decade I can decide whether or not they’re right and I should’ve had him 50 spots higher.

Recommended Matches:

• vs. Chris Markoff (JWA, 5/16/69)
• vs. Jack Brisco (JWA, 8/5/71)
• vs. Billy Robinson (NJPW, 12/11/75)
• vs. Rusher Kimura (NJPW, 10/8/81)
• vs. Tatsumi Fujinami (NJPW, 8/8/88)

74: LOW KI

When I think of singular workers, wrestlers that stand out to me as being 1 of 1, Low Ki is the first guy that comes to mind. No one moves, looks, or sounds like Low Ki. There’s a reason that the oft-imitated Matrix Minute spot with Amazing Red has never looked better than the original. The guy was like no one else before or since, an incredible fusion of speed, power, ingenuinity and grit that propelled him to indie superstardom and should have pushed him even further into mainstream recognition the likes of which his peers achieved in the decades that followed the indie boom. Of course, if that had happened, Ki wouldn’t be the Ki that we all know and love, the batshit insane guy with the gigantic ego that flamed out of the WWE and immediately started tearing it up on the indie circuit again. His talent level and peak suggests he should be another guy at least 50 spots higher than where he is, but he has ultimately been his worst enemy in his career. Still, 74th best is nothing to scoff at, even if it’d be 73 spots too low for him.

Recommended Matches:

• vs. Bryan Danielson (JAPW, 6/7/02)
• vs. Amazing Red (ROH, 6/22/02)
• vs. Samoa Joe vs. BJ Whitmer vs. Dan Maff (ROH, 2/14/04)
• vs. Necro Butcher (IWA Mid-South, 4/1/06)
• vs. Rey Mysterio Jr. (JAPW, 11/14/15)

73: RICK MARTEL

One of the great babyfaces of his time. It’s truly a shame that, to so many people, Martel will always be known as the annoying Model gimmick, because he was so much better than that. He was never a natural bad guy, and it was asinine to turn him like WWF did, but it still does hurt his case just a little, even with some pretty fun heel performances in 1990. Still, he was arguably the best babyface of the 1980s, a decade filled to the brim with all-time great babyfaces, and that counts for a lot. His Portland work, while still feeling a little rough around the edges like his tag partner, was great enough for me to feel compelled to rank him as one of the top workers of 1980. His AWA work that I’ve seen has all been phenomenal, and he really knew how to make matches feel grounded and believable which got the crowds behind him big time. Of course, he’s also a stellar tag team wrestler, as the Strike Force team with Tito Santana in WWF showed. He’s not my favorite Canadian babyface, but he’s damn sure one of the best to ever do it.

Recommended Matches:

• vs. Harley Race (PNW, 1/12/80)
• vs. Buddy Rose (PNW, 5/17/80)
• vs. Nick Bockwinkel (AWA, 3/24/83)
• vs. Jumbo Tsuruta (AWA, 9/29/85)
• w/ Tito Santana vs. The Islanders (WWF, 10/3/87)

72: RICKY MORTON

How many wrestlers do you know defined an entire role? There have been great ace champions, great invading heels, great hot tag guys, etc., but you could picture a bunch of names in all those roles. When you think of a babyface tag wrestler getting worked over, selling his/her ass off, and making desperate hope spots, you’re thinking of Ricky Morton. Period. The operative term is “face-in-peril”, but let’s be honest, it should (and is, in some cases) be called “playing Ricky Morton”, because he was that fucking good at it. Maybe the quintessential babyface tag team wrestler, so great that even a genuinely very good worker like Robert Gibson goes overlooked because he’s been attached to him all these years. The thing about Morton, as the Bockwinkel and Flair matches prove, is that even if he wasn’t the driving force behind the Rock ‘n’ Roll Express, he’d still be an awesome singles wrestler if he wanted to be.

Recommended Matches:

• vs. Nick Bockwinkel (AWA, 7/2/82)
• w/ Robert Gibson/Jim Duggan vs. Ernie Ladd/Midnight Express (Mid-South, 6/8/84)
• vs. Ric Flair (JCP, 7/5/86)
• w/ Robert Gibson vs. Arn Anderson/Tully Blanchard (JCP, 9/19/87)
• vs. Tully Blanchard (JCP, 9/26/87)

71: BOBBY EATON

From one driving force behind the legendary MX/RnRs rivalry to the next. Beautiful Bobby is one of a handful of guys you could rightfully call the best tag team wrestler ever, and when you think about the number of teams he’s been on it really is staggering. The Midnight Express team with Dennis Condrey, the subsequent team with Stan Lane, the pre-MX team with Koko B. Ware in Memphis, the team with Arn in early 90’s WCW, the brief 1993 team with Benoit, and the Blue Bloods run with Regal; all teams ranging from incredibly fun to literal best of all time contenders. Throughout them all, Eaton was consistently one of the most awesome workers imaginable, an incredible stooge only outmatched by the genius manager usually accompanying him in Jim Cornette. His range of offense was incredible, he was a pro at heat segments, and he was even a damn fine babyface when given the opportunity to. Simply put, it was a treasure to watch Bobby Eaton at work.

Recommended Matches:

• vs. Bill Dundee (CWA, 7/24/82)
• w/ Dennis Condrey vs. Rock ‘n’ Roll Express (MSW, 5/11/84)
• w/ Stan Lane vs. Fantastics (JCP, 3/26/88)
• vs. Ric Flair (WCW, 1/7/90)
• vs. Dustin Rhodes (WCW, 12/7/91)

70: TITO SANTANA

Another wrestler you could reasonably call the best babyface of his generation. Santana didn’t start the 80s as strongly as his partner Martel, but damn was he great in the thick of the decade. The AWA run is really good, but the WWF run is where Tito’s case shines: the Greg Valentine feud might be the greatest series of matches the company has ever had, the best of which could stand next to any match you could name from the period. The Savage feud, while feeling a little less diverse, is still excellent and both are as great as they are due to Tito’s ability to sell, kick a ridiculous amount of ass and convey rage, fire and indignation towards his opponents. The WWF Intercontinental Title never felt more important than when Tito was around its orbit, whether holding the belt or challenging for it. As mentioned previously, Strike Force were a great team as well and a really impressive capper to Santana’s career.

Recommended Matches:

• vs. Nick Bockwinkel (AWA, 11/20/81)
• vs. Greg Valentine (WWF, 3/31/84)
• vs. Greg Valentine (WWF, 1/21/85)
• vs. Randy Savage (WWF, 4/22/86)
• vs. Randy Savage (WWF, 5/31/86)

69: BARRY WINDHAM

There’s an air of disappointment attached to discussions around Barry Windham, and I kind of get it. This is a guy that had enough talent to be challenging for the top of this list, and an impressive peak to match. He had the complete package: a great look, incredible mechanically, versatile in his ability to play multiple roles (heel, face, underdog, veteran, etc.), a phenomenal tag worker, great seller, great bumper, great puncher. Barry Windham had everything you could want in a #1 overall prospect if you were doing a wrestling draft.

And yet…here he is at 69. As much as I love the guy, the case isn’t as strong as you would hope it’d be. An unfortunate injury in 1993 derailed a great career, but even before that he was a guy that could coast on natural talent when you’d want to see him really busting his ass. Still, though, when he was on, Windham was one of the most unreal American talents you’ll ever see, and I adore the Lone Wolf run before he got hurt. Wasted potential? Possibly, but when your ceiling is “one of the 20 greatest wrestlers ever”, it’s far from a bad thing to *only* be top 75.

Recommended Matches:

• vs. Ric Flair (JCP, 1/24/87)
• vs. Dick Murdoch (JCP, 7/11/87)
• vs. Tully Blanchard (JCP, 1/23/88)
• vs. Brian Pillman (WCW, 3/24/91)
• vs. 2 Cold Scorpio (WCW, 6/16/93)

68: GREG VALENTINE

The Damn Hammer. I don’t know why, but when I was younger, I though Valentine was one of the most boring wrestlers ever. Boy was I fucking wrong! Greg was one of the best heels of the 80s, a menace in both Jim Crockett and WWF beating the hell out of the best babyfaces each promotion had to offer. The fact that he’s so great in a decade that might not have even been his prime (if only we had more 70s footage…) is astounding. The Piper and Tito feuds are the stuff of legend, and the matches more than live up to the hype, especially the recently unearthed match with the former where the two look like they’re trying to kill each other for real. Brutal, brutal offensive worker, like an American Choshu or Tenryu just stiffing the fuck out of people. Perhaps his best and most understated trait was his ability to get the most out of everyone around him…I mean, he made teams with both Honky Tonk Man and Brutus Beefcake work, let alone the stiffs in the WWF undercard he carried in-between the Santanas and Steamboats. Longevity hurt him for me, but at his peak, he was unreal.

Recommended Matches:

• vs. Ric Flair (JCP, 10/18/80) 
• vs. Roddy Piper (JCP, 11/24/83)
• vs. Tito Santana (WWF, 6/16/84)
• w/ Honky Tonk Man vs. Tito Santana/Ricky Steamboat (WWF, 4/21/85)
• vs. Ricky Steamboat (WWF, 6/21/85)

67: VIRUS

Still going strong.

At 57, Virus still is one of the best wrestlers in the entire world. It’s stunning how can’t-miss his work is today, be it trios matches in CMLL or the brilliant maestros work in Lucha Memes. From a technical standpoint, he’s one of my favorites ever; llave can, at times, feel like it’s too cooperative, but I’ve never once felt the immersion was broken when I watched Virus in that setting. Couple that will a brilliant run as a mini in the late 90s, an exciting and athletic high flyer, and a couple of high level brawls against guys like Demus, and I just cannot deny him his spot here.

Recommended Matches:

• vs. Ciclonito Ramirez (CMLL, 1/7/97)
• vs. Ricky Marvin (CMLL, 12/12/00)
• vs. Guerrero Maya Jr. (CMLL, 6/7/11)
• vs. Dr. Cerebro (Chilanga Mask, 8/16/15)
• vs. Metalico (CMLL, 5/31/19)

66: DUSTIN RHODES

Dustin’s career is such a trip, man.

For a couple years in the mid-90s, he was one of the best wrestlers in the entire world. An absolute phenom, especially as a tag worker. Then, following a Hogan coup and some unfortunate/dubious circumstances, he ended up in Goldust in WWF, where the results were mixed due to the gimmick and his effort level, but you could tell, deep down, he was still one of the best when he applied himself. He eventually gets a great little run as a tag guy with Booker in 2002, then does very little of note until the WWECW run in 2009, then teaming with his brother Cody in 2013. The AEW run from 2019 onwards has consistently been awesome and is a beautiful feather in his cap, especially with him apparently winding down.

It’s such a strange curve, a career of peaks and valleys, but the highs are spread out across three decades, and they’re too great for me to not think he was one of the best ever.

Recommended Matches:

• vs. Bunkhouse Buck (WCW, 4/17/94)
• vs. Vader (WCW, 11/16/94)
• w/ Cody Rhodes vs. The Shield (WWE, 10/6/13)
• vs. Cody Rhodes (AEW, 5/25/19)
• vs. CM Punk (AEW, 4/20/22)

65: RANDY SAVAGE

I’m probably lower on Savage than most.

That’s fine!

I still think he’s one of the best ever. I still love him as a worker, even, he wouldn’t have gotten this high otherwise. I just think maybe I have a sort of disconnect with him. I think his resume is thinner than I was looking for, his stalling can annoy the hell out of me sometimes, and I think a lot of his WCW run is disappointing relative to his level of push (true of most Nitro-era WCW workers, to be fair). But it’s fucking Randy Savage, you know? God tier charisma, Incredible energy, incredible punches, great as both face or heel everywhere he went, one of the best bumpers in history, some undeniable classic matches to his name. Savage was an awesome wrestler.

Recommended Matches:

• w/ Jerry Lawler vs. King Kong Bundy/Rick Rude (CWA, 9/17/84)
• vs. Jerry Lawler (CWA, 6/3/85)
• vs. Tito Santana (WWF, 4/22/86)
• vs. Bret Hart (WWF, 11/28/87)
• vs. Ric Flair (WWF, 4/5/92)

64: RODDY PIPER

Piper is my fucking GUY.

Watching Portland from the very start, Roddy Piper was someone that I really found myself getting attached to. The television just felt so raw and real with him onscreen with his manic energy, both inside and outside of a wrestling ring, and he brought that with him to every territory. A guy you could reasonably say was a top 20 babyface and top 20 heel ever in the same breath, he put his entire being into both roles. Remarkably intense either way, too, and in any situation; title match, blood feud, squash match, Piper was busting his ass. Probably not the most abundant resume of great matches to his name, but his performances really have a way at sticking in your head when you watch him. He was a master at what he did, and he’s one of my all-time favorites.

Recommended Matches:

• w/ Rick Martel vs. Buddy Rose/Ed Wiskoski (PNW, 8/2/80)
• vs. Jack Brisco (JCP, 7/10/82)
• vs. Greg Valentine (JCP, 7/9/83) 
• vs. Buzz Sawyer (GCW, 8/14/83)
• vs. Bret Hart (WWF, 4/5/92)

63: JOHN CENA

Remember how I said Jeff Hardy was my first favorite wrestler?

Yeah, Cena was the second.

I’ll probably always have an attachment to Cena, even though he had one of the worst retirement runs the sport’s ever seen and he seems physically incapable of saying a bad word about Vince McMahon. The thing is that the work holds up extraordinarily well, too. He shows flashes of greatness from 2003 and 2004, but from 2005 to, like, 2016, Cena was a stellar worker. Laundry list of great matches with so many guys, a great seller as demonstrated in the Umaga and Lesnar matches especially, knew how to structure a match even with the criticisms towards his “Five Moves of Doom” formula. Contrary to somewhat popular belief, he was a very selfless performer for the most part, too, making guys like Punk, Bryan, Orton, Batista, Lesnar, and Henry look amazing during his period as the top guy in WWE as well as the Cesaro’s and Kevin Owens’s of the landscape during his post-ace years.

It wasn’t all perfect. The final run definitely left a bad taste in my mouth, and probably cost him a few spots here. But there’s not many wrestlers John Cena couldn’t stack up to at his very best.

Recommended Matches:

• vs. Rob Van Dam (WWE, 6/11/06)
• vs. Umaga (WWE, 1/28/07)
• vs. CM Punk (WWE, 7/17/11)
• vs. Rey Mysterio (WWE, 7/25/11)
• vs. Brock Lesnar (WWE, 8/17/14)

62: MICK FOLEY

How could you not love Mick Foley?

He got like three gimmicks over, in numerous promotions and countries. He’s on the shortlist for best bumper of all time, throwing his body around with an inhuman ability to take punishment for his audience’s enjoyment. He’s one of the best brawlers wrestling has ever seen. A borderline genius seller (because, as mentioned before, he really was getting the shit beat out of him). Their might not be another wrestler more talented at bringing wrestlers up to his level, from shaping Shawn Michaels into the fighting world champion he should’ve been to sacrificing his brain to get Rocky over in 1998 to legitimiziting the illegitimizable in Triple H in 2000 to molding Randy Orton into the Legend Killer in 2004. Foley, or Cactus Jack, or Mankind, or Dude Love, always erred on the side of danger in order to craft the most entertaining matches possible, and he’ll always have a spot in my heart—and my list—for that.

Recommended Matches:

• vs. Big Van Vader (WCW, 4/17/93)
• vs. Terry Funk (IWA Japan, 1/8/95)
• vs. Shawn Michaels (WWF, 9/22/96)
• vs. Steve Austin (WWF, 5/31/98)
• vs. Randy Orton (WWE, 4/18/04)

61: SAMI ZAYN/EL GENERICO

Apparently a bunch of baby-brained idiots have gotten it in their heads that Sami Zayn is a bad wrestler, and a plague on the wrestling business.

Sucks for them, because he’s one of the best to ever fucking do it.

One of the greatest babyfaces in the history of our sport. Both in the Generico mask and out of it, he always had such amazing body language that made you buy into him against whoever he was facing. I honestly don’t know if it’s more impressive that he was so fucking good at drawing sympathy out of people in that ridiculous gimmick and mask without speaking a word of English, or that he dropped the mask in WWE and immediately became an even better and more emotive worker. He’s one of the best indie workers ever, one of the best DDT workers ever, and at this point is probably one of the best WWE wrestlers ever too. The Steen feud is right up there with Hero/Kingston as one of the best in the history of indepedent wrestling, and Steenerico were a goddamned amazing team. I wasn’t watching that NXT run in real time, so I don’t have that level of nostalgia for it like others do, but it still holds up incredibly well. I don’t know why you’d ever turn the man heel, which WWE have apparently now done twice, but he’s not half bad at that when he’s given a chance to do something worthwhile. He’s one of the most important wrestlers of the century (the Bloodline would be nothing if not for Sami’s involvement in the storyline, fwiw), and a legend in his own right.

Recommended Matches:

• w/ Kevin Steen vs. The Briscoes (ROH, 8/10/07)
• vs. Ricochet (PWG, 10/9/10)
• vs. Kevin Steen (PWG, 10/22/11)
• vs. Cesaro (WWE, 2/27/14)
• vs. Roman Reigns (WWE, 2/18/23)

60: CLAUDIO CASTAGNOLI

Another duo that just feels right next to each other.

Claudio is one of the most consistent wrestlers I’ve ever seen. He was outstanding in 2011 PWG, and he’s still outstanding today, 15 years later on national television. He didn’t become the huge star that some of his peers became in WWE (some people still think the most compelling conversation to have about him is if he ever should have been world champion, for some reason), but he was one of the most sure-fire guys on the roster during that time period. One half of a great tag team with Chris Hero as Kings of Wrestling, whose work especially in the 2010s holds up well. He’s probably one of the strongest humans to ever step foot in a wrestling ring, which he utilized excellently to become one of the best bullies in wrestling by just tossing guys around like it’s nothing. He’s not exactly a fountain of charisma, although probably underrated in that regard, but he provides enough character in his work to have great, memorable feuds with both El Generico and Eddie Kingston. I don’t know if Claudio’s underrated anymore, but for my tastes, 60 feels like a perfect spot for him.

Recommended Matches:

• vs. El Generico (PWG, 8/20/11)
• vs. William Regal (WWE, 12/25/13)
• vs. John Cena (WWE, 2/17/14)
• vs. Sami Zayn (WWE, 2/27/14)
• vs. Darby Allin (AEW, 8/27/25)

59: GIANT BABA

Giant Baba is simply a joy to watch.

I never get tired of Baba matches. There’s just something about the guy that’s innately captivating, and I don’t think it’s just the fact that he’s freakishly tall. At or around his peak athletically, he was a guy that could do everything well, brawling with the best bruisers in the world like Fritz von Erich and Abdullah the Butcher and crafting mat classics with renowned wizards like Billy Robinson. He was so goddamn smart too, one of the smartest of all time for my money, which allowed him and his work to age gracefully as the years went on. There are wrestlers who you would rather not check out their last matches as they’re so worn down and depressing to watch in their advanced ages, but Baba was still going strong to the very end in 1998 before his untimely death. The almost alien-like physique might throw some people off initially, but once you get past it, you’ll be rewarded with one of the most entertaining talents the sport has ever seen.

Recommended Matches:

• vs. Fritz von Erich (JWA, 12/3/66)
• w/ Antonio Inoki vs. Gene Kiniski/Johnny Valentine (JWA, 12/1/70)
• vs. The Destroyer (AJPW, 12/19/72)
• vs. Jack Brisco (AJPW, 12/2/74)
• vs. Fritz von Erich (7/25/75)

58: JAGUAR YOKOTA

A genuine trailblazer in her own right.

Firstly, and I feel this must be said for all of the best joshi workers of the era, Jaguar Yokota was a wunderkind. I mean, the fact that she was having legit incredible matches before she even turned 20 is fucking nuts to think about, and she retired at the age of 24! Unfortunately it’s that retirement, and her subsequent return in the mid-90s not comparing favorably to her peers’ respectively, that hurt her for me, but during her run as top gal of AJW, you would be hard-pressed to find a more impressive worker.

Yokota wrestled with a speed and ferocity that leaps off the screen, teetering on the edge of incoherence but rarely ever crossing that line. She was one of the best bomb throwers of her era, and a lot of the stuff she had in her toolbox was state-of-the-art that would blow the minds of anyone in the early to mid 80s. At her best, Jaguar Yokota felt like a wrestler delivered straight from the future, and we’re still unearthing new classics from her every year.

Recommended Matches:

• vs. Jackie Sato (AJW, 12/16/80)
• vs. Devil Masami (AJW, 9/7/83)
• w/ Devil Masami vs. Crush Gals (AJW, 9/26/84)
• vs. La Galactica (AJW, 2/25/85)
• vs. Lioness Asuka (AJW, 8/22/85)

57: ARN ANDERSON

How could you not love Double A?

Arn is one of a handful of people that had zero chance of even sniffing my top 10, but every time I watch him, I think “this is like the best wrestler ever”. He’s a tag team savant, with at least three great ones to his name with Ole Anderson, Tully Blanchard and Larry Zbyszko. He’s maybe the definition of what a heel stooge looks like; I can close my eyes and vividly picture him taunting the crowd by pointing to his head, turning around, and getting clocked by a babyface. With that being said, he’s one of the most trustworthy guys in history to work a heat segment, a master of aggression and crowd control. And, while he might not have any all-time classic singles matches on his resume, he was a phenomenal singles worker as well, and one of the defining TV champions in wrestling history.

If you’re someone that only values insane peaks or a stacked lineup of classic matches, Arn might not be for you. Personally, while I can’t say I’ve never seen a bad Arn Anderson match in watching hundreds of them, but I can damn sure say I’ve never seen a bad or even passable Arn performance, and that means a lot to me.

Recommended Matches:

• w/ Ole Anderson vs. Rock ‘n’ Roll Express (JCP, 11/27/86)
• w/ Tully Blanchard vs. Lex Luger/Barry Windham (JCP, 4/23/88)
• vs. Barry Windham (WCW, 11/2/91)
• w/ Larry Zbyszko vs. Ricky Steamboat/Dustin Rhodes (WCW, 11/19/91)
• vs. Ric Flair (WCW, 9/17/95)

56: BILLY ROBINSON

The king of catch-as-catch-can.

Billy Robinson is another wrestler that immediately stands out as one of the best ever when you watch him. I think his IWE match with Verne Gagne in 1974 is arguable the best match of the entire decade, a dizzying affair that may not be for everyone as it’s a slow burn mat classic, but is perfectly in tune with my own tastes. It actually speaks to how frustrating watching Robinson is because, like Gagne, so little of his pre-70s work has been salvaged, and considering he’s a contender for the best wrestler of that decade in his 30s to early 40s, who knows how great he was in his 20s? Who knows, maybe he wasn’t as skillfully adept at working in and out of wrestling holds and building a match up to a roaring crescendo as he is in all the stuff we have of him, but it would at least give us a clearer vision of his whole career. As it stands, what we do have is good enough for me to think he’s just on the cusp of being a top 50 worker ever.

Recommended Matches:

• vs. Verne Gagne (AWA, 11/20/74)
• vs. Antonio Inoki (NJPW, 12/11/75)
• vs. Giant Baba (AJPW, 7/24/76)
• vs. Abdullah the Butcher (AJPW, 12/9/76)
• vs. Nick Bockwinkel (AJPW, 12/11/80)

55: BULL NAKANO

It’s not a long run, but when Bull was on top she kicked so much goddamn ass it’s actually shocking.

Bull never came across to me as a weak worker, but by the time she won the WWWA world title and ruled with an iron reign, she was consistently a “holy shit” level great wrestler. It really shouldn’t be understated just how far above she was above all of her peers entering the 1990s, and it took most all of them a few years to become consistently great workers, yet she was still able to pull rabbits out of a hat with the likes of Aja Kong, Manami Toyota, Akira Hokuto and others before they even reached their final forms. She really was the perfect bridge between her mentor Dump Matsumoto and her greatest rival in Aja, as this huge domineering presence with a violent temperement who was just as likely to stab someone with scissors as she was to drop them on their head with a thunderous powerbomb. Yet, even with how monstrous she could be at her peak, she was perhaps even better at selling, walking a finer line than most of feeling sympathetic while still retaining her dangerous aura, something she only got better at once she dropped the title and became a more ambigous character than overtly heel.

If Bull had another five or ten years wrestling at the level she was at from 1990-94, she probably could have skyrocketed up this list. She’s arguably the coolest wrestler to ever live, and the 55th best wrestler ever on top of that.

Recommended Matches:

• w/ Condor Saito vs. Crush Gals (AJW, 10/11/87)
• w/ Grizzly Iwamoto vs. Jungle Jack (AJW, 8/19/90)
• vs. Aja Kong (AJW, 11/14/90)
• vs. Yumiko Hotta (AJW, 1/23/91)
• vs. Shinobu Kandori (LLPW, 7/14/94)

54: MARIKO YOSHIDA

If this was a list purely based on favoritism, Mariko Yoshida would be like 50 spots higher.

In watching a bunch of her work, from both AJW and ARSION as well as later freelance work in the 2000s, I consistently came away impressed. The AJW work obviously doesn’t hold a candle to her later career work, but she’s consistently good and has a fair amount of gems to her name during this period against the likes of Chaparita ASARI and Yumiko Hotta. She shows herself to be a real sympathetic worker, and a standout bumper to boot, but I would say it’s more of a complimentary period than a true case-builder for this list.

The ARSION work, on the other hand, is absolutely unreal, and the bulk of her case. Just mind-meltingly great stuff with everyone from Rie Tamada to Ayako Hamada to Reggie Bennett to AKINO to Aja Kong. Her Queen of Arsion title matches against Hiromi Yagi and Mikiko Futagami in February and April of 1999 respectively are legit classics in my eyes, incredible in construction and execution. The speed and precision with which she moves on the mat made my jaw drop at various points over the course of watching her work, and cemented her as someone I felt compelled to vote for.

Her later period work is also quite underrated in my view, too; she’s often talked up as a peak candidate from 1998-2000—for good reason, she’s arguably the WOTY for both years—but the Megumi Fujii match in 2003, the AtoZ tournament matches against both Hotta and Momoe Nakanishi on the same night, the 2004 Carlos Amano match, and the 2006 NEO title match against Yoshiko Tamura prove to me that she was still great well beyond that peak and her later years probably haven’t received enough critical examination. Hell, her 2017 retirement match against Leon is still really solid and impressive, a respectable final match for a great that wrestled for nearly three decades.

At her best in ARSION, her style makes even a style as celebrated as 90’s All Japan Womens seem bland and unimaginative in comparison. One of the most compelling figures in Joshi history, and maybe the best ever at her peak in terms of convincing me that they actually give a shit about winning and losing a match.

Recommended Matches:

• vs. Reggie Bennett (ARSION, 5/5/98)
• vs. Hiromi Yagi (ARSION, 2/18/99)
• vs. Mikiko Futagami (ARSION, 4/14/99)
• vs. Carlos Amano (GAEA, 4/30/04)
• vs. Arisa Nakajima (IBUKI, 11/11/07)

53: SANGRE CHICANA

I don’t know that Sangre Chicana isn’t actually the greatest wrestler ever.

I understand how you might be confused. I ranked him 53rd because, in everything I have ever seen him in, he’s been unbelievable. He might have the great match in the history of lucha libre with his MS-1 apuestas match in 1983, followed up immediately by a great title match with El Satanico the next night, and then an all-time classic trios match against Los Infernales the week after. He has arguably the best punches of anyone you could name in wrestling history. He was great well into the 90s, and probably has worthwhile stuff in the 2000s as well.

Needless to say, Chicana was a phenomenal performer. Yet, his career started in 1971, twelve years before that MS-1 apuestas match. As far as I know, no footage exists of him pre-unmasking. Even in the 80s, we don’t have an abundance of matches from him. Who knows how much all that missing footage could bridge a gap and leave us with less doubts about where a talent as gifted as Sangre Chicana should end up? It’s both the beauty and tragedy of this process, and it’s something that routinely makes me second guess what I value most when considering a list like this.

Recommended Matches:

• vs. MS-1 (EMLL, 9/23/83)
• w/ La Fiera & Mocho Cota vs. Los Infernales (EMLL, 9/30/83)
• vs. Villano III (UWA, 12/7/84)
• vs. Perro Aguayo (EMLL, 2/28/86)
• vs. El Satanico (EMLL, 5/26/89)

52: JERRY LAWLER

Speaking of all time great punchers.

Lawler is someone that you either really get, or he bounces off of you. Clearly, I’m in the former camp, though not enough to see him as a strong GOAT contender like his biggest champions would. I think the limited moveset is very interesting, but can get tiring especially on repeat viewing. At his peak in the 80s, he wasn’t my favorite US babyface in the world. And hell, I’m human, the out of the ring stuff probably dropped him a few spots for me. But god damn, the longevity he has is too undeniable for me, mixed in with some all-time great feuds vs. Bill Dundee and Terry Funk plus great ones beyond that like with Randy Savage and Dutch Mantell. He had a complete and total monopoly over an entire territory, and it’s always interesting to see how a promotion shapes itself around its ace. Consider that Memphis was one of the best and most entertaining territories ever, I’d say that reflects extremely well on Jerry Lawler.

Recommended Matches:

• vs. Terry Funk (CWA, 3/23/81)
• vs. Dutch Mantell (CWA, 3/29/82)
• vs. Bill Dundee (CWA, 6/6/83)
• vs. Randy Savage (CWA, 6/3/85)
• vs. Bill Dundee (CWA, 12/30/85)

51: DAISUKE IKEDA

I don’t know about you, but I’d like to see Daisuke Ikeda beat the shit out of Griffith.

Ikeda suffers a bit for two reasons: one, he’s not as great or diverse as Ishikawa was at their respective peaks, and two, the NOAH run while fun is a decent chunk of his career and is not particularly inspiring or filled with great matches. That keeps him right on the outskirts of my top 50. What gets him this high up is the fact that he was an absolute monster at his peak, has incredible longevity going into the current decade, and is one of the best strikers ever. I mean, goddamn, the way he would just obliterate people with kicks and punches and whatever else came to his mind was equally brutal to watch and also impossible to look away from. He was a demonic whirlwind of a wrestler, just blitzing guys (usually Ikeda) with the stiffest shots you could ever image.

Ikeda vs. Ishikawa might be the greatest in-ring feud ever, full stop, and even if he’s the lesser part of that dynamic, he’s still quite easily an all-time great.

Recommended Matches:

• vs. Alexander Otsuka (BattlArts, 11/5/97)
• vs. Yuki Ishikawa (BattlArts, 5/27/98)
• vs. Yuki Ishikawa (Fu-Ten, 4/24/05)
• vs. Takeshi Ono (Fu-Ten, 9/26/10) 
• w/ Katsumi Usuda vs. Yuki Ishikawa/Takeshi Ono (Fu-Ten, 12/19/10)

50: LA PARK

I think one of the most universal truths about wrestling is that LA Park, or La Parka for a more American-centric crowd, ruled.

When someone people think of Park, they think of the endlessly watchable, endlessly lovable AAA luchador constantly doing bits regardless of if he’s on the rudo or tecnico side. Some think of the WCW cruiserweight who was heavier than everyone in his division, who was consistently awesome in short bursts because WCW never really cared enough to give the luchadores consistent time save Eddie and Rey. Others still will think of the 2010s iteration, the insane fighter staking his claim for the best brawler ever in matches against El Mesias, Dr. Wagner Jr., and Rush. Me personally, I’m partial to the 2000s version of Park that walked into CMLL and instantly clicked with every rudo on the roster, especially Ultimo Guerrero, and merged the wild reckless fighting instincts of his latter years with impressive athletic spots and dives for a guy his size.

No matter which version of LA Park you’re thinking of, though, we all can agree that the guy was fucking awesome, and that spans over three decades of stellar work.

Recommended Matches:

• vs. El Hijo del Santo (Monterrey, 12/23/01)
• vs. Ultimo Guerrero (CMLL, 9/17/04)
• vs. El Mesias (AAA, 6/18/11)
• vs. Dr. Wagner Jr. (TXT, 5/11/13)
• vs. Rush (Lucha Azteca, 7/16/16)

49: YOSHIHIRO TAKAYAMA

Takayama was the fucking coolest.

It feels like you can throw a dart at a Takyama match from the 2000-04 and he would have the best performance. He towered above most everyone he faced in both stature and aura, and he wrestled appropriate to that. He could be a downright sadist when he wanted to be, just picking dudes apart with the sickest knees you’ve ever seen or a deadly fist right to the noggin. Over the course of writing up these wrestlers I’ve realized that I really love great asskickers, great bullies, and exceptional babyfaces, and the thing about Takayama is that he fits the first two categories perfectly, and he provides an incredible foil for the last category to overcome. You could probably make a GWE case for Takayama solely off of his post-2004 stroke work alone, which is fucking absurd.

I’ll always think fondly of the not-so-gentle giant, and I can only see him rising higher in my estimation as I continue going through his work.

Recommended Matches:

• vs. Kenta Kobashi (AJPW, 5/26/00)
• vs. Yuji Nagata (NJPW, 5/2/02)
• vs. Mitsuharu Misawa (NOAH, 9/23/02)
• vs. Takashi Sugiura (NOAH, 7/10/10)
• vs. Shinjiro Otani (NOAH, 3/6/11)

48: RIKI CHOSHU

Choshu is someone that only rose up higher and higher in my head, from someone I didn’t even consider a year or two ago to a wrestler I had to have in or around my top 50. You could argue that Choshu’s palette was too limited, and maybe it did hurt some of his singles work notably, but it is staggering how much Choshu got out of essentially just a lariat, a Scorpion Deathlock, a backdrop driver, and a small planet’s worth of charisma. Any match Choshu is in feels more important and interesting by his presence, his crowd connection was second to few others in Japanese wrestling history, and he personally had a hand in shaping at least three legitimate GOAT contenders in Fujinami, Jumbo and Tenryu. And, while his limitations might hinder him in singles action, it only serves to make him one of the greatest tag workers I’ve ever seen, especially with Yoshiaki Yatsu as his partner. It seems like wherever Choshu went in the 1980s he had the magic touch, making both wrestlers and promotions better and more exciting than they were before, and I found that I valued that a lot when comparing him head-to-head with everyone else.

Recommended Matches:

• vs. Tatsumi Fujinami (NJPW, 4/3/83)
• vs. Antonio Inoki (NJPW, 8/2/84)
• w/ Yoshiaki Yatsu vs. Jumbo Tsuruta/Genichiro Tenryu (AJPW, 1/28/86)
• w/ Shinya Hashimoto vs. Genichiro Tenryu/Takashi Ishikawa (WAR, 4/2/93)
• vs. Shinya Hashimoto (NJPW, 8/2/96)

47: DICK TOGO

Dick Togo is a Swiss Army knife of a professional wrestler.

Togo can work sprints, can work long puro epics, can brawl, and can work a scientific match if so inclined. He’s a great tag worker, as evidenced by his stuff in KDX and even in Bullet Club. He can work title matches, is one of the greatest lucharesu guys ever, can do maestro matches in Mexico, can punch with the best of them, can take it to the air, can base for young high flyers, and can excel both as an imposing bully or a sympathetic underdog. He can work an emotional, context-dependent match or a throwaway four minute WWF Shotgun match, and it’s all fucking awesome because of Togo’s inclusion.

There really isn’t anything I think Dick Togo couldn’t do in a wrestling context (he even got a great ladder match out of 2000s Chris Hero, for those of you that hate the Punk one!). Once I realized how versatile he really is, plus how long his career has been, he skyrocketed up my list and I haven’t seen a reason yet for him to fall.

Recommended Matches:

• vs. Jushin Thunder Liger (NJPW, 6/17/96)
• w/ MEN’S Teioh/Shiryu/Shoichi Funaki/TAKA Michinoku vs Gran Hamada/Gran Naniwa/Masato Yakushiji/Super Delfin/Great Sasuke (Michinoku Pro, 12/16/96)
• vs. MIKAMI (DDT, 1/30/05)
• vs. Antonio Honda (DDT, 1/30/11)
• vs. HARASHIMA (DDT, 2/27/11)

46: JACK BRSICO

I’ve seen takes that Jack Brisco has too little footage to rank fairly, from people even more into his respective era than I am, when talking about their own lists.

I really don’t understand it!

Do I think Jack Brisco, like numerous others I’ve mentioned on this list, could shoot up if a bunch of matches from his prime surfaced or even the clipped ones were unearthed in full? Of course, but I saw more than enough to say Brisco is one of the best I’ve ever seen. As you can tell, I really love the fighting babyfaces of the 1980s territories like Rick Martel, Tito Santana, and others, and it feels like Jack Brisco was the progenitor of that entire archetype. There’s not a single flaw I could point you to mechanically, his armdrags were perfect and everything he connected with looked incredible. Like his peers, he was an expert on the mat, and a terrific seller as well. He was also a really good heel in the glimpses of it that I saw, both subtly in Japan against native heroes as well as overtly in the tags with his brother against Ricky Steamboat and Jay Youngblood.

Brisco kept going strong until he apparently grew disillusioned with the wrestling business and where it was heading. I suppose he echoes his spiritual succesor Bret Hart in that way, and I think anyone who’s huge into the latter should take the time to watch Jack Brisco’s matches, because he was an incredible worker for his time or any time.

Recommended Matches:

• vs. Antonio Inoki (JWA, 8/5/71)
• vs. Jumbo Tsuruta (AJPW, 1/30/74)
• vs. Roddy Piper (JCP, 7/10/82)
• w/ Gerald Briscoe vs. Ricky Steamboat/Jay Youngblood (JCP, 7/9/83)
• vs. Ric Flair (GCW, 4/7/84)

45: WILLIAM REGAL

Some guy, no clue what his name was, came up with the phrase “input over output” to describle wrestlers who were consistently excellent individually, even if the match they were in did not live up to their performance.

William Regal might be the proof of concept for that phrase.

It’s not to say Regal never had great matches. He had plenty of them, especially with workers who spoke his language like Finlay and Benoit, and later Dean Ambrose, but when I think of Regal I think of his consistently great performances first and foremost. One of the greatest wrestlers I’ve ever seen at the little things that make this stuff worth watching. A real rotten bastard when he needed to be, stiff and violent when necessary, a complete coward in other moments, but almost always impeccable on an individual level. Sneakily one of the great TV guys in wrestling history, both with his impressive WCW TV title reigns working against and succeeding with a wide variety of opponents as well as later WWE matches that worked whenever he was allowed to stretch his (and his opponent’s) limbs out for a change. One of my guys, and one of the best ever.

Recommended Matches:

• vs. Barry Windham (WCW, 4/17/93)
• vs. Shinya Hashimoto (NJPW, 4/16/95)
• vs. CM Punk (WWE, 7/28/08)
• vs. Dean Ambrose (FCW, 11/6/11)
• vs. Kassius Ohno (WWE, 4/10/13)

44: EL DANDY

Another point for why this list isn’t meant to be playing favorites, because Dandy is not a wrestlers I adore on an instinctual level, but he gets this far because I immensely respect him, his career, and his skillset. Dandy was a wrestler that you could put in pretty much any situation and he’d get the absolute best out of it. In the same year, he has in my and many other eyes what is the greatest technical match to ever come out of Mexico with Angel Azteca, and then two singles matches out of a blood feud with former partner El Satanico that you could argue were even greater than the Azteca match. He excelled on the mat, in the air, brawling with the best punchers in lucha libre, working a blistering pace with the likes of Negro Casas, you name it. He’s so much more than some cheap punchline, and you owe it to yourself to watch him and give him the respect he deserves.

Recommended Matches:

• vs. Emilio Charles Jr. (EMLL, 7/28/89)
• vs. Angel Azteca (EMLL, 6/1/90)
• vs. El Satanico (EMLL, 12/14/90)
• w/ Hector Garza & Negro Casas vs. El Hijo del Santo/Bestia Salvaje/Scorpio Jr. (CMLL, 11/29/96)
• vs. El Hijo del Santo (Monterrey, 6/14/98)

43: JIM BREAKS

This fucking guy.

I think that Jim Breaks got glee out of being an asshole. Like, he genuinely took pride out of being a contemptable prick and getting crowds riled up at his antics. Of course, he’s also someone that could quickly drop into a fit of rage when things weren’t going his way, the biggest crybaby (complimentary) that the sport has ever seen. When he was fuming mad like that, I’d hate to have been one of his opponents, because the way he would pull off the most mind-bendingly awful things to do to one’s limbs is cringe-inducing.

I watched every Jim Breaks match from the 70s that I could find, and he blew me away nearly every time out. The Street match is an actual classic to me, and the best of the Young David series is not far behind, a genuine feat given he was wrestling a literal teenager. He’s the only World of Sport wrestler I felt comfortable ranking, which is one of my only real gripes with my list as I wish I had prioritized some of the guys I know are also great like Steve Grey and Marty Jones, but even if I had ranked them there’s no doubt to me that Breaks would still be the one highest on my list. The fact he’s this high up should tell you how much I enjoy the style at its absolute best.

Recommended Matches:

• vs. Adrian Street (JP, 2/12/72)
• vs. Steve Best (JP, 6/28/72)
• vs. Jon Cortez (JP, 7/31/76)
• vs. Steve Grey (JP, 7/7/79)
• vs. Young David (JP, 2/23/80)

42: SAMOA JOE

JOE, JOE, JOE, JOE, JOE, JOE.

I think people go a little overboard with Samoa Joe, but it’s understandable. I have no gripes with 2002-8 Joe, and 2004-6 Joe is indeed one of, if not the greatest peak in wrestling history. Amazing offense, great selling, classics upon classics with the best of his generation, all of that. He was that damn good. My problem has always been how quick people are to gloss over the next decade or so, where his work in TNA declines as his motivation decreases. For a guy just entering his 30s, Joe should have had a much deeper resume in the late 2000s to early 2010s than he did, and I cannot hear the “well, it was TNA” excuse when his peers were still busting their ass and getting good results even in a shitty environment like that. The WWE run I actually think is underrated but overall still gives off the feeling of disappointment as injuries mounted and it seemed like he couldn’t go at the level he once could.

Of course, this AEW run has only breathed new life into his case.

Joe wrestles for AEW like a handful of times a year, and he’s never failed to excel no matter what he’s up against. The Darby series are some of the best TV matches the company has ever run, his world title chases and reigns have been a lot of fun to watch, and he even got to add to his all-time great feud with CM Punk before he retired too. It seems like Samoa Joe is winding down his career in the promotion, and it honestly feels like a blessing that this run has been as great as it is. Samoa Joe went from someone you could argue was a what-if to an actual living legend over the last decade.

Recommended Matches:

• vs. Jay Briscoe (ROH, 3/13/04)
• vs. CM Punk (ROH, 12/4/04)
• vs. Necro Butcher (IWA Mid-South, 6/11/05)
• vs. Kenta Kobashi (ROH, 10/1/05)
• vs. Darby Allin (AEW, 2/1/23)

41: MAYUMI OZAKI

The worst bitch in the entire world (extremely complimentary).

It’s hard not to get romantic when talking about Mayumi Ozaki. I’ll never forget watching the Dream Rush tag with Dynamite Kansai against Manami Toyota and Toshiyo Yamada and Ozaki just kicking away one of her opponent’s hands from making the tag. It felt so cruel and demeaning, and that’s the exact spirit she wrestled with most of her career. A violent, evil, hateful, vengeful little bastard of a wrestler that took pleasure in wrapping her fist around a chain and punching the daylights out of your favorite joshi wrestlers, past and present. The fact that she could have the classic street fight with longtime rival Kansai in 1995 and then have another masterpiece of bloodshed and brutality nearly 30 years later against Mio Momono speaks wonders to her longevity, and I hope she continues bloodying up Our Heroes until the day she dies.

Recommended Matches:

• w/ Dynamite Kansai vs. Manami Toyota/Toshiyo Yamada (AJW, 11/26/92)
• vs. Dynamite Kansai (JWP, 3/17/95)
• w/ Devil Masami vs. Chigusa Nagayo/Dynamite Kansai (GAEA, 4/15/95)
• vs. Mima Shimoda (OZ Academy, 2/28/99)
• vs. Mio Momono (OZ Academy, 4/28/24)

40: CM PUNK

Oh, Punker.

It took me a while to come around on Punk. I generally thought he was overrated and I would parrot the most common criticisms about him (sloppy, unathletic, etc). Re-examining his work and watching his AEW crash outs in real time gave me a new perspective on him, and turned me into a big fan which I could not have imagined a decade ago. It’s not that he wasn’t sloppy or unathletic, he absolutely was and you could tell when watching his matches, it’s just that all of that fades away when you notice how well he structures his matches, how great he could be on both sides of the wrestling spectrum, and how much he just got it on an innate level. I mean, you can’t brainstorm the masterpiece that is the CM Punk heel turn in ROH if you aren’t incredibly thoughtful about your work and character, but all throughout his career you can find excellent little touches that make the matches stand out even more. He was the first guy of the indie boom to really bend WWE to his will and make them acknowledge him through sheer force of talent, almost always hitting it out of the park with whatever they threw at him even while they were actively trying to sabotage him. The Joe series, which I’ve revisited in full over the last year, holds up as well as any series of matches you want to name, indie or otherwise, and the fact that you could argue Joe isn’t even his career rival is a statement in itself.

I’ll probably never see CM Punk the way his deepest admirers do, but that’s fine. I know that I’m much more closely aligned to them than I am with his biggest detractors, and I’m happy about that.

Recommended Matches:

• vs. Samoa Joe (ROH, 10/16/05)
• vs. Austin Aries (ROH, 6/18/06)
• vs. John Cena (WWE, 2/25/13)
• vs. The Undertaker (WWE, 4/7/13)
• vs. Eddie Kingston (AEW, 11/13/21)

39: JUSHIN THUNDER LIGER

When I first drafted my list, Liger was sky high. With time and personal reflection, he started falling further and further, and I can say it is at least a little his fault. Liger is the posterboy for the 90’s New Japan juniors division, and if I’m being honest I could take or leave a good amount of that stuff. It didn’t age especially well, fireworks shows with little substance underneath, and while Liger was at worst the second best at it, he was prone to that kind of checklist wrestling mindset as well.

All that said, Liger’s greatest hits are still some of the greatest wrestling ever.

First and foremost, the Naoki Sano series. Goddamn, man. One of the best examples of escalation over a multi-match series, and while I’ve come around to thinking the August 1989 match is the best the two had (and Liger’s best selling performance ever), the blowoff match is still a tremendous piece of violence and retribution. The matches with Benoit, while overrated, are still mostly great. The Sasuke matches hold up very well, and the J-Cup match will always stick out in my mind for that eternal image of Liger clapping sarcastically at Sasuke’s botch before immediately losing due to his hubris. Liger mixing it up with the heavyweights is always a fun time, and invading heel Liger in NOAH is the perfect asshole you want to see the underdogs upset.

Jushin Thunder Liger was great, and he was at worst an entertaining worker for like three decades. He deserves to be representd high on this list, just not as high as I once thought.

Recommended Matches:

• vs. Naoki Sano (NJPW, 8/10/89)
• vs. El Samurai (NJPW, 4/30/92)
• vs. Shinya Hashimoto (2/24/94)
• vs. The Great Sasuke (NJPW, 4/16/94)
• w/ Wataru Inoue vs. Tsuyoshi Kikuchi/Yoshinobu Kanemaru (NOAH, 2/17/02)

38: SHINJIRO OTANI

The best New Japan junior.

To be clear, while great, Otani’s New Japan work is not what gets him this high. It’s what got him on the list for sure, his constant energy and will to win as a junior that made his best work there so exhilirating to watch, but that’s a great resume for a top 75ish guy. No, what shot Otani way up for me was watching his work in ZERO1, especially his feud with resident dickhead Kazunari Murakami. Heavyweight Shinjiro Otani is of God’s greatest gifts to professional wrestling, and it boggles my mind that there was ever an air of disappointment attached to it; every great instinct that made him a great junior remained intact, but he was having incredible brawls with the biggest and baddest guys around, from his massacre of Yuki Ishikawa to his battle with the unstoppable Naoya Ogawa. He was such a good invading force, too, a wonderful bully to the young guns in early NOAH like Morishima and KENTA. And, as I mentioned before, the Murakami feud is what really did it for me, watching Otani’s eyes bulge out of their sockets as he beats the dog shit out of arguably the greatest bully of an entire generation.

There’s no doubt in my mind that Otani was one of the best ever. The only question for me is if I shortchanged him by not watching enough of his 2010s work, because if that holds up well, he could jump up even further than he already did.

Recommended Matches:

• vs. Masao Orihara (WAR, 1/16/94)
• vs. Jushin Thunder Liger (NJPW, 2/9/97)
• vs. Yuki Ishikawa (ZERO1, 4/27/02)
• vs. Kazunari Murakami (ZERO1, 7/20/06)
• vs. Shinsuke Nakamura (NJPW, 10/12/09)

37: BLUE PANTHER

I mean, what a guy.

A lot of you are primarily familiar with Blue Panther through his incredible old man tecnico run over the last couple years in CMLL. I love this run just as much as anyone, but it’s the fact that he’s been doing this since the goddamn late 80s that impresses me so much. It seems like the initial impression of Blue Panther’s prime work was how great he was on the mat, one of the smoothest technicians ever. This isn’t untrue, especially whenever paired with El Hijo del Santo, but what always drew me to him was how fucking great he was as a rudo, a real prick in trios matches especially. He’s not the most evil rudo ever, granted, but he was undeniably great at it wherever he went and especially in AAA. Panther’s always had a flair for the dramatic which appealed to me, and it translated well to all his tecnico runs, especially his classic apuestas match against Villano V in 2008. Once the mask came off, he became an even better tecnico, super sympathetic as a rapidly breaking down old man fighting off the likes of Negro Casas and, more recently, Ultimo Guerrero.

The fact that Panther is tangibly adding to his GWE case at the age of 65 and counting is nothing short of a miracle, and it’s something none of us should take for granted. I hope in a decade Panther will still be going strong into his 70s, but I’ll take every year we have left with him in a CMLL ring as a blessing regardless.

Recommended Matches:

• vs. Super Astro (AAA, 10/9/92)
• w/ Psicosis & Fuerza Guerrera vs. El Hijo del Santo, Octagon & Rey Misterio Jr. (AAA, 3/17/95)
• vs. El Hijo del Santo (Monterrey, 4/9/00)
• vs. Villano V (CMLL, 9/19/08)
• vs. Ultimo Guerrero (CMLL, 9/21/25)

36: BRET HART

There’s something very funny about me ranking a guy that got his career cut short prematurely right above someone still having classics in his 60s, but here we are.

I fucking love Bret Hart. He’s been an all time favorite of mine for as long as I can remember. I know some people find him dry and boring or what have you, but for the life of me I’ve never been able to understand that perspective. He was so incredible mechanically, hitting everything with a snap and precision that made all his offense look so good. When he had people even close to his level, such as Austin, 1-2-3 Kid, his brother Owen, and even Shawn on occassion, he was able to carve out not only classic level matches, but matches that define an entire generation and are still influencing wrestlers to this day. But he was also an excellent carrier, too; I think Kevin Nash is historically underrated, but who do you know got better matches out of him and The Undertaker in the 90’s? He made selling look like an art form in its own right, not a guy that plays to the cheap seats but an incredibly thoughtful worker in conveying damage and fighting through pain. The Excellence of Execution was not a master of holds as you might think, but he was pretty damn good when it came to working that way as well.

I don’t think it’s a perfect career. Obviously, longevity hurts him in this discussion, and I think he gets a little less flack than he probably deserves for not being one for deeper cuts in between the classics, but at his best Bret Hart could stand shoulder to shoulder with any wrestler you could name.

Recommended Matches:

• vs. Mr. Perfect (WWF, 8/26/91)
• vs. Owen Hart (WWF, 3/27/94)
• vs. 1-2-3 Kid (WWF, 7/11/94)
• vs. Diesel (WWF, 11/19/95)
• vs. Steve Austin (WWF, 11/17/96)

35: EDDIE GUERRERO

Eddie Guerrero is my favorite wrestler ever.

I’ve known it for years now. The guy just makes me smile every time I watch him, because he was so unbelievably great at his best. So goddamned funny, such great execution on everything he did, incredibly emotive after a certain point in his career, incredible range in both character and skillset. A great TV worker, someone who outside of that awkward period in his first WWF run where he was battling his own demons, you could always trust to get a match over with the live crowd and the viewing audience.

Eddie had two different and impressive peaks, one of which I’m watching currently over the course of watching late 90s WCW and another I’m very familiar with from maybe late 2003 to his very last day on earth. The latter peak is particularly impressive to me because he was arguably the best babyface on earth in 2004 with the all time great underdog performance against Brock Lesnar and the bloodbath masterpiece with JBL, and then he flips it around and becomes maybe the best heel on earth against his biggest rival Rey Mysterio. The fact that they were able to draw that feud out and keep it compelling in spite of how hokey the storyline got in the end is immensely commendable, and as great as Rey was in all their matches, Eddie was the driving force as this sociopathic monster hell-bent on humilating his former best friend.

Eddie Guerrero was a marvel to watch at his best. He died as the best wrestler on the planet, and even two decades removed from the tragedy, it still hurts to think about what more he could have accomplished in the the twilight of his career.

Recommended Matches:

• vs. Shinjiro Otani (NJPW, 6/5/96)
• vs. Rey Mysterio Jr. (WCW, 10/26/97)
• vs. Brock Lesnar (WWE, 2/15/04)
• vs. JBL (WWE, 5/16/04)
• vs. Rey Mysterio (WWE, 6/23/05)

34: CHRIS BENOIT

Many people will never watch or consider Chris Benoit again after the atrocities he commited, and I completely understand them. Personally, as someone that was a child when the murders happened, I never had any real attachment to him the way an older generation had, which both leaves me completely dispassionate towards him yet able to watch his matches without as much baggage as others. And I’ve watched so many matches with him in it over the course of going through projects watching 90s WCW, 90s New Japan, and 2000s WWE, and the guy was really goddamned great for a long time. Great seller, great matches, great offense, all of that. He is the worst human on my list by a long shot, and I get why others wouldn’t rank him, but I think it’s important to be honest with myself and what I value in wrestling. Maybe that says something about me as a viewer, maybe that says something about the wrestling business that a guy that was so great at it permanently ruined his mind with the steroid use and the bumps on his head and everything else that factored in to what he did. Maybe in a decade I’ll have a change in perspective and won’t feel comfortable ranking him at all.

Recommended Matches:

• vs. Kevin Sullivan (WCW, 6/16/96)
• vs. Chris Jericho (WWF, 1/21/01)
• vs. Steve Austin (WWF, 5/31/01)
• vs. Triple H vs. Shawn Michaels (WWE, 3/14/04)
• vs. William Regal (WWE, 7/16/05)

33: MEIKO SATOMURA

A queen of consistency.

Meiko Satomura was an active performer for the better part of 30 years, and more often than not she was excellent at what she did. She breaks out big in 1999 fighting against her future career rival Aja Kong, and really never looks back from that point on. There are two halves to Satomura’s career; the first in which she’s a fiery underdog babyface going full speed at both her generation and the ones that paved the way before her, and the second is the veteran ace of her own promotion Sendai Girls, a stoic yet badass conqueror who gets increasingly more comfortable working on top against rivals like Kana or younger workers like the STARDOM gals she helped mold into great workers. Both sides of the coin are incredible in their respective roles, and it can sometimes feel insane to think of how fast she bridged that gap in the mid-2000s.

Even with the chaos and notably down ecosystem of the joshi scene in 2000s, Meiko Satomura rarely ever let you down during this “dark period”. She helped usher in a new boom for the scene, putting over her bright young proteges like Chihiro Hashimoto before setting off into the sunset. She retired with her head held high as one of the best wrestlers alive last year, and we’re all worse off without her.

Recommended Matches:

• vs. Akira Hokuto (GAEA, 4/29/01) 
• vs. Aja Kong (Sendai Girls, 7/9/06)
• vs. Kana (Kana Pro, 2/25/14)
• vs. Kairi Hojo (Stardom, 6/14/15)
• vs. Io Shirai (Stardom, 12/23/15)

32: BUDDY ROSE

Buddy’s another one of my guys.

He was the central hub of the Portland territory, and he shows up immediately as soon as footage of the promotion starts popping up in 1977. What impresses me most out of Rose is how much he got out of relatively little; while Flair had Steamboat, Lawler had Dundee and so forth, Buddy Rose was getting great results out of the likes of Lonnie Mayne and Sam Oliver Bass. These are pretty good workers, mind you, but none of them were even close to Rose’s level, and yet he pulled them up there every single time.

As far as what he excelled at Rose had an excellent variety with which to work with; as a heel, he could stooge and bump his ass off for the babyfaces—and he’s one of the greatest bumpers ever, period—, but he could also get real mean and vicious and fuck guys up when he wanted to. He knew how to keep a crowd in the palm of his hands, and not just his crowd; when he went up North and challenged Backlund for the WWF title, he was a master at jaw jacking with the fans on the outside to get them riled up. Considering the nature of the promotion, he’s probably the best 2/3 falls worker ever outside of Mexico, building all of his matches up incredibly to where no finish felt generic and samey. When he turned face, he was really quite good in that role as well, too, reverse engineering his already great selling to appear more sympathetic with his home crowd who bought into him completely.

There’s so much left I still need to see from Buddy Rose, but I’ve never once felt disappointed with one of his performances even as the pounds kept piling on. Really, what’s the point of watching wrestling if not to watch a fat man do insanely athletic shit to entertain you?

Recommended Matches:

• vs. Lonnie Mayne (PNW, 10/1/77)
• vs. Roddy Piper (PNW, 5/12/79)
• vs. Bob Backlund (WWF, 10/16/82)
• vs. Dynamite Kid (PNW, 9/17/83)
• w/ Doug Somers vs. Midnight Rockers (AWA, 8/30/86)

31: AJ STYLES

If he didn’t last time around, AJ Styles feels even more undeniable now.

AJ is someone who did it at a high level for over two decades. Coming onto the scene as one of the most daring high flyers ever, but unlike the countless worse wrestlers that cite him as an influence, he held an adherence to coherent match structure and natural escalation. Styles was a freak of nature, one of the most gifted athletes at this physical peak that I’ve ever seen, and he used that athleticism to craft some of the most compelling matches on both the indies and in TNA over the course of the 2000s. He was a wonderful babyface to root for because of his natural instincts and talents, a top flight bumper and a really good seller when appropriate. Unlike his rival and friend Samoa Joe, even during the darkest days of TNA he still remained a bright spot giving effort when it might have seemed pointless.

Of course, the New Japan run was just as incredible, too. He de-emphasized the high flying that made him special but became much more well-rounded as a performer. He was a whole lot more confident as a heel in Japan, a lot meaner and more petty as the leader of Bullet Club than he ever was prior. He didn’t always hit it out of the park on the first try, but he got at least one great match out of so many guys on the roster, and a beautiful send-off with Nakamura at the 2016 Dome show. Then, he transitions perfectly into the WWE house-style, in a matter of months having fringe classics with the likes of Roman Reigns and Dean Ambrose, and he was at that level for at least a couple years before he finally began to slow down.

If there ever was a total package of a wrestler (beyond Lex Luger, of course), someone you could design in a lab to get the perfect combination of what makes this sport great, AJ Styles is likely one of the closest wrestlers ever to fitting that mold.

Recommended Matches:

• vs. Low Ki (ROH, 8/24/02)
• vs. Abyss (TNA, 4/24/05)
• vs. Samoa Joe (TNA, 12/11/05)
• vs. Minoru Suzuki (NJPW, 8/1/14)
• vs. Brock Lesnar (WWE, 11/19/17)

30: VOLK HAN

Words do not do Volk Han’s greatness justice.

This Sambo master turned shoot-stylist is the definition of quality over quantity. Cagematch says he only wrestled in 69 matches from 1991-99, all under the RINGS banner, and it’s a blessing for the rest of the field that he didn’t go any further, because my GOD. Genuine genius level grappler, pulling holds out of thin air that will make your eyes pop up out of their sockets. Incredibly physical performer in both the mechanical sense as well as in the way his subtle movements would signify the mood and tone that he’s trying to convey. I revisited the Tamura trilogy recently, and that submission he snags right at the end of their second match genuinely sent chills down my spine when revisiting it, and that series isn’t exactly an outlier in terms of the quality level of his matches or performances. It’s almost certainly the shortest career of anyone on this list, but Volk Han might have had the greatest hit rate of any wrestler that’s ever walked this Earth, .

Recommended Matches:

• vs. Grom Zaza (RINGS, 5/16/92)
• vs. Mitsuya Nagai (RINGS, 12/24/94)
• vs. Yoshihisa Yamamoto (RINGS, 6/17/95)
• vs. Kiyoshi Tamura (RINGS, 9/25/96)
• vs. Kiyoshi Tamura (RINGS, 1/22/97)

29: VADER

FEAR NO MAN. FEEL NO PAIN.

When people talk about a wrestler’s versatility, they usually mean how they adapt to different environments. You could say that Vader, the man who had top runs in New Japan, All Japan, WCW, and UWF-I alongside respectable runs in WWF and NOAH, was “versatile” for getting over in all these places, but Vader wrestled the same way everywhere he went.

Considering the results he achieved, that might be even more impressive.

Vader is the guy I immediately think of when I think “big man”. He wasn’t as tall as Andre or Baba, but he had just as formidable an aura, and his offense was even more brutal than both. He was the mountain for every would-be top babyface in America and Japan to topple, from the young pup Fujinami would stave off for the IWGP title in the late 80s to the big dog that Sting, Takada, Tamura, Foley, Michaels, and an aging Flair had some of their best matches with.

Perhaps most impressive is how long he stayed himself. I won’t lie and tell you that Vader in NOAH is the same beast that he was in his physical prime, but you would be surprised just how fucking entertaining the guy still was on those undercards all the way up to 2002.

Once you add up him completely owning Will Ospreay on Twitter and in real life, I can’t see a reasonable argument against the man.

Recommended Matches:

• vs. Shinya Hashimoto (NJPW, 4/24/89)
• vs. Sting (WCW, 12/28/92)
• vs. Nobuhiko Takada (UWFI, 8/18/94)
• vs. Antonio Inoki (NJPW, 1/4/96)
• vs. Jun Akiyama (AJPW, 1/23/00)

28: RICKY STEAMBOAT

I know people think the debate between Steamboat and the other great babyfaces of the 1980s is close, but to me, he stands head and shoulders above those guys.

Steamer matches are like comfort food to me. Never once have I ever watched a Ricky Steamboat match and felt like I was ripped off or that something didn’t make sense from a logical standpoint. He is the consumate American wrestling babyface in my eyes, with some of the best hope spots ever. That WCW run from 1991-94, while all too short, is all-time great in itself and shows him busting his ass to make every wrestler around him better, from teaming with a young Dustin Rhodes or Shane Douglas to battling it out with Steve Austin and Brian Pillman. I imagine he didn’t invent the Steamboat rule (that is, throwing in a hope spot or two before the heel takes back control so that the fans buy into your eventual comeback), but it’s named after him for a fucking reason. I cannot stress enough how great a seller he was too, making every opponent’s offense look like death to take.

There is very little in wrestling I consider more spiritually correct than watching Steamboat return a Flair chop with one of his own that’s ten times harder, and it speaks to how great he was that he’s the one that shines brightest in that pairing for me.

Recommended Matches:

• vs. Randy Savage (WWF, 2/14/87)
• w/ Eddie Gilbert vs. Ric Flair/Barry Windham (WCW, 1/21/89)
• vs. Ric Flair (WCW, 4/2/89)
• vs. Rick Rude (WCW, 6/20/92)
• vs. Big Van Vader (WCW, 5/29/93)

27: YUKI ISHIKAWA

What happens when you fuse the spirit of Antonio Inoki with the grittiness and technique of Yoshiaki Fujiwara?

To be clear, Ishikawa does not have the innate charisma that Antonio Inoki possessed (no one did), and he’s not quite as precise as his mentor, but goddamn what an incredible career he’s had. He’s one of the greatest minds to ever come out of shoot style or a shoot style adjacent leaning, and as the owner of Battlarts, is directly responsible for some of the sickest wrestling that has ever happened on film. As mentioned with his wrestling soulmate Daisuke Ikeda, their series is maybe the greatest in all of wrestling history, beating the shit out of each other in the stiffest, most brutal, most hard-nosed competitions imaginable over the course of 30 years and counting. Their work is more ambiguous as far as alignment than a Lawler/Dundee or a Dump/Chigusa, but I’ve always felt Ishikawa was the more compelling and sympathetic worker of the two. In general, he can be a great babyface, as shown in the brilliant Murakami singles match, where he valiantly defended his promotion from an evil invader.

Longevity is on Ishikawa’s side, too. He was already a good worker by like 1994, and stands out immediately as a great worker with Battlarts’s opening in 1996, and remains a WOTY contender every year of that decade. The work gets spottier post-2000 until Battlarts 2.0, but there’s still great stuff to be found like his 2002 Fire Festival run, the Ikeda FUTEN masterpiece, and the Ryuji Hijikata mauling in All Japan. Then, when Battlarts reopens in the late 2000s, he shows a new side to himself in consistently the most out of lesser workers in addition to showing up for old foes like Carl Greco and Alexander Otsuka. Fast forward to the 2020s, and he might still have the match of the decade with the 2020 iteration of the Ikeda match in wXw. He’s had a truly insane career when you think about it, enough to just barely miss the top 25 sight unseen some of his 2010s indie work.

Recommended Matches:

• w/ Alexander Otsuka vs. Daisuke Ikeda/Takeshi Ono (BattlArts, 10/30/96)
• vs. Daisuke Ikeda (BattlArts, 9/1/97)
• vs. Alexander Otsuka (BattlArts, 1/20/98)
• vs. Kazunari Murakami (BattlArts, 11/26/00)
• w/ Alexander Otsuka/Munenori Sawa vs. Daisuke Ikeda/Super Tiger II/Katsumi Usuda (BattlArts, 7/26/08)

26: DEVIL MASAMI

What a prodigy Devil Masami was.

Like Jaguar Yokota, she was having incredible matches before she was even an adult. Their matches in particular are some of the best of the era, but Devil was having great matches with the whole roster it seems like. She’s probably the single greatest facial actor in wrestling that I’ve ever seen, able to contort her face into these masks of different emotions given the context of whatever moment she was in. Everything felt uber important with her in the ring, from the nearfalls to the holds she applied to whatever else you want to name. Masami in her peak excelled in whatever kind of match you could put her in, from gimmick brawls against Monster Ripper to workrate tags against the Crush Gals, and everything in between.

As she got older (as in, like, 25), she forwent the AJW mandatory retirement and jumped to JWP, where she bulked up and turned into this awesome bruiser that powerbombed girls into oblivion. This, of course led to a run some of us loving refer to as “Undertaker Devil Masami”, which had her in a sort of zombie gimmick that is hit or miss for most but that I personally really enjoy and think she was great at. She goes to GAEA and settles down as a veteran presence capable of still having great matches on the right ocassion, like the Crush Gals reunion tag in 2000 with Akira Hokuto. All of this, of course, before she even turns 40.

It’s remarkable the amount of longevity Devil had as a good to great performer before even hitting middle age, and at her best she was one of the most transcendent wrestlers in the business.

Recommended Matches:

• vs. Jaguar Yokota (AJW, 7/19/82)
• w/ Jaguar Yokota vs. Crush Gals (AJW, 6/28/84)
• vs. Chigusa Nagayo (AJW, 8/22/85)
• vs. Shinobu Kandori (JWP, 7/14/88)
• vs. Mayumi Ozaki (JWP, 12/12/93)

25: NICK BOCKWINKEL

Apologies to Matt D.

Bockwinkel is a legend that I think I took for granted. I always came away really impressed in everything I saw him in, and I’ve know for a while that he was landing somewhere on my list, but Bock wasn’t someone I really prioritized in my viewing until late in this process, and I’m kicking myself for that now.

Bockwinkel was every bit the superworker I always heard he was, and then some.

Technically and mechanically flawless, a guy that was consistently captivating when working in and out of holds. As the top guy in AWA for the majority of the matches we have of him on tape, he was truly exemplary and wrestled appropiately to his status as a world champion, and yet he was also as magnificent a heel as you could hope for. Both home and away, Bockwinkel knew the best way to work over the best babyfaces he had access to, from Lawler in Memphis to Tito and Martel in AWA. He meshed great with his Japanese dance partners as well; I’ve yet to explore the IWE work that I’ve seen hyped up, but the Jumbo broadway in Hawaii is nearly perfect, in my eyes.

It’s hard to discuss someone like Bockwinkel who was so great at everything that he did. The only flaws in Bockwinkel’s case have nothing to do with his work, but the fact that we have so little of it. This man challenged Lou Thesz for the NWA heavyweight title! Couple that with the fact that AWA is one of the most clipped territorial promotions, and we have a criminally low amount of work to judge someone who realistically could challenge for a #1 spot. It’s still enough to think he’s easily one of the 25 best wrestlers ever for me.

Recommended Matches:

• vs. Tito Santana (Houston, 11/20/81)
• vs. Billy Robinson (AWA, 12/25/81)
• vs. Rick Martel (AWA, 9/20/84)
• vs. Larry Zbyszko (AWA, 11/27/86)
• vs. Curt Hennig (AWA, 11/21/86)

24: AKIRA TAUE

It’s hardly worth saying anymore, but if you don’t see what made Akira Taue special, I don’t really know what to say to you.

He was already really good by the time he jumps ship and aligns with Jumbo in 1990. His early chemistry with Kawada as an opponent is only surpassed by their chemistry as teammates, and their bloody brawl in January 1991 is what I wish more of the King’s Road style looked like rather than the [great but] long epics. His peak years in 1995 and 1996 stand up there with the best of any wrestler in All Japan or otherwise in the entire decade, like if Giant Baba’s child was some kind of vengeful demon.

Holy Demon Army were one of the best tag teams ever, and while Kawada had the narrative that was easy to understand and buy into as the misunderstood villain, Taue did the dirty work and was routinely working intentionally in compliment to Kawada in their tag matches, even giving his partner the pin because he knew how much it meant to him. In a bizarre sense, Taue was the most selfless and kind of his peers, which you could easily forget when you see him tear apart Mitsuharu Misawa’s injured face.

I think we’ve grown past the point where we have to argue about whether or not Akira Taue was even a Pillar. His body of work speaks for itself, remaining one of the most consistently good guys in NOAH for years even after the bodies of him and his peers broke down. His mind carried him through it all just like it always did.

Recommended Matches:

• vs. Toshiaki Kawada (AJPW, 1/15/91)
• vs. Mitsuharu Misawa (AJPW, 4/15/95)
• w/ Toshiaki Kawada vs. Mitsuharu Misawa/Kenta Kobashi (AJPW, 6/5/95)
• vs. Kenta Kobashi (AJPW, 7/24/96)
• vs. Yoshinari Ogawa (NOAH, 5/26/02)

23: STAN HANSEN

A force of nature.

Hansen’s probably the first guy you think of when you think of a brawler in wrestling, and for good reason. His brand of violence has led to some of the wildest, most out of control spectacles in wrestling with all kinds of wrestlers such as Andre the Giant, Carlos Colon, and Terry Funk. You probably also think of Hansen when you think of foreigners in Japan, and that’s also for good reason, as he spent the bulk of his career in the country, especially working for Giant Baba in All Japan. In fact, he was so tenured there that in the late 90s, crowds began to heer for the old Texan as his career was winding down. Through it all, Hansen was consistently awesome, never betraying his crazed persona but managing to tap into a newfound sympathy in his selling as he got older and more broken down. His last matches were a beautfiully appropriate sendoff, going down guns blazing just like he always worked. Hansen was incredible, and that’s just a fact of life.

Recommended Matches:

• vs. Bruno Sammartino (WWWF, 8/7/76)
• vs. Andre the Giant (NJPW, 9/23/81)
• w/ Terry Gordy vs. The Funks (AJPW, 8/31/83)
• w/ Terry Gordy vs. Genichiro Tenryu/Toshiaki Kawada (AJPW, 12/16/88)
• vs. Toshiaki Kawada (AJPW, 2/28/93)

22: KIYOSHI TAMURA

Nobody should be able to work shoot style as fast and efficiently as Kiyoshi Tamura did.

Watching Tamura in RINGS was like finding a new religion. Like, what do you mean wrestling could look this realistic, be work this lightning fast, and yet still retain all the drama that keeps me wanting more? It’s like he broke the rules of what wrestling could be in my head. That impression really hasn’t gone away for me even with becoming more familiar with his RINGS work as well as his stuff in UWF-I…he really was so good it’s almost unfair.

Shoot style can be somewhat dry and lacking in narrative unless you’re looking really hard, but it’s so easy to drop into the Han/Tamura series and see his natural progression from cocky upstart dismissed by the current ace in the first match, to near-equal in the second, to finally surpassing him in the third. Better still might be his feuds with Tsuyoshi Kohsaka and Yoshihisa Yamamoto once he firmly establishes himself as ace, not stepping over the line into overt heel-isms but making it incredibly easy to buy into the underdogs knocking him down a peg.

And, if that’s not enough, somehow he returns back to wrestling in U-STYLE after an extended period doing MMA, and it looks like he hasn’t even missed a beat. It’s unfair! Kiyoshi Tamura did not play under the same rules as mere mortals.

Recommended Matches:

• vs. Yoji Anjo (UWF-I, 8/28/92)
• vs. Volk Han (RINGS, 1/22/97)
• vs. Tsuyoshi Kohsaka (RINGS, 6/27/98)
• vs. Yoshihisa Yamamoto (RINGS, 6/24/99)
• vs. Hiroyuki Ito (U-STYLE, 8/18/04)

21: STEVE AUSTIN

There are two kinds of wrestling fans: the ones that understand that Steve Austin was one of the best to ever do it, and the one that have no fucking idea what they’re talking about. (And that’s the bottom line…)

Austin is maybe the most frenetic workers I’ve ever watched. The guy is CONSTANTLY moving, and it’s beautiful to watch him in motion. His commitment to kineticism made every match he was in feel anywhere from a little to a LOT more urgent when he was involved, and you can track this from his early years all the way to the tail-end of his active career. His WCW career is criminally underrated; he was one of the best wrestlers in the world in that 1992-95 period, and that’s an incredibly stacked era respectively. The Hollywood Blondes were an incredible stooging heel tag team that was broken up far too soon, and while I love Pillman and rate him very highly during that period, Austin was just as much responsible for their successes.

Austin walked into the WWF rightfully pissed off, and never let his foot off the gas. Even when he got hurt, Austin he managed to either get himself massively over outside of the ring to the point where they had no choice but to crown him or contributed to insane pops for the other stars on the roster to benefit from. I think there’s some kind of disconnect for people where they cannot imagine a guy as massively over and entertaining for the out of the ring shenanigans could be considered a great worker, but make no mistake no one kicked more ass with as much energy as he did in that Stone Cold run. The Rock match at Mania X-7 is his magnum opus, showcasing the manic energy, insane bumping, and fantastic brawling that defined the best work of his career, and that kickstarts the greatest in-ring year any wrestler has ever had in a WWE ring.

Steve Austin was a gigantic star, and he did what gigantic stars do: go out fast, but burn as bright as anything you’ve ever seen when they were in front of you.

Recommended Matches:

• WarGames (WCW, 5/17/92)
• vs. Ricky Steamboat (WCW, 3/12/94)
• vs. Bret Hart (WWF, 3/23/97)
• vs. The Rock (WWF, 4/1/01)
• vs. Kurt Angle (WWF, 8/19/01)

20: CHIGUSA NAGAYO

You might have noticed earlier when I specified that Steamboat is the best American babyface ever.

This is because I think Chigusa Nagayo was the best babyface ever, regardless of country.

You will not hear louder crowds in your life than the ones during AJW’s peak in the mid to late 80s during Crush Gals matches. Those girls lived and died for their idols, and it wasn’t just due to the aesthetics. Chigusa especially shined brighter than her partner Lioness Asuka, a worker so far beyond her years in portraying the underdog and eliciting sympathy out of her audience. It says something that Chig could work a masterpiece of a title match with Devil Masami and then do the first Dump hair match less than a week afterwards, and both stand out as two of the most unforgtettable matches in the history of joshi canon. The Dump feud is an all-time great one, and it’s just as harrowing to see Nagayo get terrorized by this demonic force as it is triumphant to see her get her revenge in the rematch a year later.

Chigusa Nagayo was far from one-dimensional, though. As great as she was as the underdog, she might have settled even better into her role as a less emotional and more stoic Ace figure in those last years before her first retirement. There’s something incredibly special about the progression between those Crush Gals explode encounters, or the match with a young Akira Hokuto in 1989. When she comes back in the mid 90s, she adopts a more bruising style befitting of her more bulked up physique, and she’s awesome in that as well. As the founder of GAEA, she gets bonus points for creating the best, most entertaining joshi promotion ever in my opinion plus training an all time great in Meiko Satomura as well as a future great like Mio Momono or a promising young star like Senka Akatsuki.

The best joshi wrestler of her generation, able to adapt to change when necessary, and someone I instantly clicked with as soon as I saw her.

Recommended Matches:

• vs. Devil Masami (AJW, 8/22/85)
• vs. Dump Matsumoto (AJW, 8/28/85)
• w/ Lioness Asuka vs. Dump Matsumoto/Crane Yu (AJW, 10/10/85)
• vs. Dump Matsumoto (AJW, 11/7/86)
• vs. Akira Hokuto (AJW, 3/19/89)

19: AKIRA HOKUTO

The Dangerous Queen.

I don’t quite buy her as a legitimate GOAT contender, I think longevity ideally should be a factor here and those middle years between 1994 and the 2001 match with Meiko are less than ideal, but she’s undeniable. Everything you’ve heard about her peak is true; she really was a one of a kind character, befitting of the Las Cachorras Orientales moniker bestowed upon her and her girls when wrestling her AJW peers but also a firm defender of her promotion and the spirit of pro wrestling against rival Shinobu Kandori. The heart and determination to overcome gruesome injuries before she even found her iconic Dangerous Queen persona, the spite and gall to blatantly disrespect a woman that could (and did!) tear her apart if she so inclined, the ability to draw sympathy out of such an unsympatheic character that made the Kandori matches work, plus the ability to keep up with the fastest and most reckless workers of her generation like Manami Toyota and ground them as well as anyone could hope to made her one of the most magnetic wrestlers ever to watch.

I still get chills thinking about her post-match interview after her Dream Slam classic, her blonde hair dyed red with her own blood and covering her entire face save one eye shining brightly, defiantly challenging Shinobu Kandori to as many matches as she wants because she knows she’ll win them all. It’s not a match, but if you want a perfect encapsulation of why Akira Hokuto is the 19th best wrestler of all time, I can’t think of anything that encapsulates her quite as well as this does.

Recommended Matches:

• vs. Bull Nakano (AJW, 1/4/91)
• vs. Kyoko Inoue (AJW, 11/26/92)
• vs. Shinobu Kandori (AJW, 4/2/93)
• vs. Shinobu Kandori (AJW, 12/6/93)
• vs. Meiko Satomura (GAEA, 4/29/01)

18: NEGRO CASAS

I’m not sure there’s anyone else like Negro Casas in lucha libre, or really in wrestling in general.

First of all, he’s one of the best candidates ever as far as longevity goes. He has classic matches going all the way back to the mid-1980s, was one of the very best and most consistent wrestlers in the 1990s and especially from 1992-99 with his CMLL run, and was getting serious WOTY buzz at least as late as 2014. That’s a pretty unbelievable career, and something only a handful of guys could reasonably lay claim to touching. He’s one of the most charismatic luchadores ever, to the point that even voters who don’t like or “get” lucha libre will likely vote for Casas regardless because of his universality. He’s an excellent trios worker, having a habit of shining in whatever trios match he’s in regardless of if his pairing is the focus or not. The diversity of his skillset means that he can work heated blood feuds just as effectively as comedy exoticos matches, mat-based title matches as well as violent and chaotic apuestas battles. His feud with El Hijo del Santo is the greatest ever to me, with their best work together standing head and shoulders above everyone around them. They even make great tag partners in the late 90s and early 2000s, showcasing Casas’s ability to be a damn good tecnico when possible.

Casas is someone who could only go up for me, as I plan to watch every single match of his that made tape in his CMLL career. I have a sneaking suspicion that now, even at age 66, the man is probably still really good and it’s just that nobody’s checking in on his work to find out.

Recommended Matches:

• vs. El Hijo del Santo (WWA, 7/18/87)
• vs. El Hijo del Santo (UWA, 5/17/91)
• vs. El Dandy (CMLL, 7/3/92)
• vs. Blue Panther (CMLL, 3/2/12)
• vs. Rush (CMLL, 11/30/13)

17: JUN AKIYAMA

Speaking of longevity.

Jun Akiyama is 34 years on and still going strong. He was nearly immediately great, being one of the shining examples of a great rookie year, and kept improving and improving as his push increased, soon enough resulting in him stepping in as ace Mitsuharu Misawa’s regular tag team partner. Misawa gelled better with Akiyama than most of his other partners, adopting a big brother/little brother dynamic that made a stale All Japan much more fresh and interesting. Once he moved on to becoming Kobashi’s partner later in the decade, the dynamic was much more even, which was illustrated in their incredible Triple Crown title match in 1998, in which Akiyama firmly asserted his philosophy with a laser focus on Kobashi’s bad knee.

Once the new millenium rolled around and he found a new change of scenery in NOAH, Akiyama took to a new heel persona perfectly, asserting himself even further as the top guy not just in the promotion, but in all of Japan as a force to be reckoned with. While he might not have been built to carry a promotion like NOAH as the ace he likely was meant to have become, Akiyama’s work never faltered and he spent the 2000s having great clashes with every notable heavwyeight in the country, before adopting a more elder statesman role in the next two decades in places like All Japan and DDT making their entire roster of younger guys better in the process.

If we’re comparing wrestlers to ball players, Jun Akiyama was no Michael Jordan or LeBron James. He had all the ability in the world to be a #1 option, but his career just never shook out that way, always destined to stand in the shadows of legends when people discuss his career. As it stands, though, being the world’s greatest Scottie Pippen is nothing to scoff at.

Recommended Matches:

• vs. Kenta Kobashi (AJPW, 7/24/98)
• vs. Mitsuharu Misawa (AJPW, 2/27/00)
• w/ Yuji Nagata vs. Kenta Kobashi & Mitsuharu Misawa (NOAH, 2/17/02)
• vs. KAI (AJPW, 4/29/13)
• vs. Kazusada Higuchi (DDT, 8/30/25)

16: HIROSHI TANAHASHI

Go Ace.

I’ve spent the last several months going through Hiroshi Tanahashi’s career, and it’s been incredibly rewarding for me in watching a guy I love become an all time great from year to year. He’s not a prodigy, and there’s no immediately outline of the outstanding worker he would transform into over his prime, but by like 2004 he’s already showing the flashes of greatness you’d expect from him, and by 2006 I think he proves himself to already be a great worker as he wins the IWGP title for the first time. 2007 is his most pivotal year, though, in which he proves himself against guys set out to embarass the pretty boy like renonwed junior Koji Kanemoto or Yuji Nagata.

The thing that stood out to me when watching so much Tanahashi over a long period of time was just how intellectual his matches felt. Some of it might just be me and others seeing things, but you start to notice patterns with his big matches that feel like genuine strokes of genius, and even if the main event style can be exasperating to sit through at times, you’re still left impressed by the way Tana structures his work with little details that will either be rewarded as the match goes on or will be called back to in a major way in future matches. You can see how sharp his mind worked in his brilliant post-ace run in the late 2010s, where he leans into his aging body to craft these compelling narratives against a younger generation of stars, especially the likes of Kota Ibushi and Kenny Omega.

He’s not a perfect wrestler. His strikes were never great, which is pretty damning in a promotion with so many incredible strikers, and he sometimes had a propensity to overreach with guys that were in way over their heads with him. But it boggles my mind how anyone can see the level of thought and care Tanahashi put into his matches for two decades and not come out thinking he’s one of the greatest of all time.

Recommended Matches:

• vs. Tetsuya Naito (NJPW, 10/10/11)
• vs. Minoru Suzuki (NJPW, 10/8/12)
• vs. Kazuchika Okada (NJPW, 4/7/13)
• vs. Tomohiro Ishii (NJPW, 8/2/13)
• vs. Kota Ibushi (NJPW, 8/12/18)

15: TATSUMI FUJINAMI

Tatsumi Fujinami was cut from a different cloth.

It’s interesting the way people talk about Fujinami now. It feels most people recognize his greatness, but it’s like you either really connect with him and he’s super high up for you, or you don’t feel that connection and he ends up lower on your ballot. Clearly, I fall in the former camp, and it’s because Fujinami was one of the most transcendentally great workers ever in his prime. One of the greatest juniors runs ever in the late 70s and early 80s, moves up to heavyweight and becomes an even better wrestler, and stays consistently excellent throughout the entire decade. He just had an in factor that made me want to see him win, which was only helped by his incredible, incredible selling and attention to the little details. There was a narrative that Fujinami became washed in the 1990s after an unfortunate injury cut his peak short, and while I find myself in the middle of that debate rather than firmly on one side, he still had some great matches to his name far after his prime, like the masterclass with his protege Osamu Nishimura in his own promotion of MUGA.

Dragon was an incredibly enthralling professional wrestler at his best, capable of anything you could think of an always coming at opponents with a rigid determination that appeals so much to my sensibilities.

Recommended Matches:

• vs. Ryuma Go (NJPW, 7/27/78)
• vs. Dynamite Kid (NJPW, 2/5/80)
• vs. Riki Choshu (NJPW, 4/21/83)
• vs. Akira Maeda (NJPW, 6/12/86)
• vs. Big Van Vader (NJPW, 6/26/88)

14: EL SATANICO

Satan himself.

The thing about Satanico is that he’s so fucking great, and he was so great for so long too. We have footage of him being fantastic in the early 1980s, every bit the worker you’d expect to embody a gimmick like “El Satanico” suggests, and he doesn’t look like he slows down at all deep into the 90s. A deeply savage and ruthless performer that exuded hatred and animosity towards all your favorite tecnicos, but just as capable of dialing that back and working a respectful but heated title match too. He’s the leader of Los Infernales in almost all of their formations, and he took that role perfectly, one of the best ever at commanding traffic and controlling the flow of chaos in a trios match. Hell, even in his relatively brief glimpses as a tecnico in 1989-90 and in the 2000s battling against Ultimo Guerrero & Rey Bucanero, he looks great in that, too.

El Satanico was a generational wrestling bad guy. He defines what the rudo role is supposed to look like for me, the worst of bullies that you secretly admired watching for how much he put into his entire body of work.

Recommended Matches:

• w/ Espectro Jr. & MS-1 vs. La Fiera/Mocho Cota/Sangre Chicana (EMLL, 9/30/83)
• vs. Atlantis (EMLL, 1/20/84)
• vs. Shiro Koshinaka (EMLL, 7/30/84)
• vs. Sangre Chicana (EMLL, 5/26/89)
• vs. Pirata Morgan (AAA, 11/26/93)

13: TOSHIAKI KAWADA

Shakespeare’s favorite wrestler.

There was a time Toshiaki Kawada was my favorite of all the Pillars. He’s easily the most accessible to me, arguably the most expressive one along with Kobashi and the one with the easiest story to understand and get behind. No wrestler has ever embodied the frustration that comes with being an eternal #2 than Toshiaki Kawada, a completely tragic individual that could never get out of his own way when all he could see was red when staring at the guy in the green tights. Kawada was a world class seller at his best, probably THE single best knee seller in history as you can see in the December 1993 RWTL classic. He’s one of the greatest facial actors ever, wearing his rage, exhausation, pride and everything in between all on his face for the world to see. All of his offense looked amazing, even if him and his peers went overboard with the bombs in the latter half of the 90s, and he was an especially relentless striker.

Even if he’s directly responsible for the worst wrestlers you know imitating the Kawada kicks, and he didn’t have the strongest 2000s of the Pillars, I’ll always love Dangerous K. There are few characters in wrestling who resonate with me more, and the fact that he retired shortly after Misawa’s death always struck me as deeply poetic and a fitting conclusion for him and their narrative.

Recommended Matches:

• w/ Akira Taue vs. Mitsuharu Misawa/Kenta Kobashi (AJPW, 12/3/93)
• vs. Mitsuharu Misawa (AJPW, 6/3/94)
• vs. Steve Williams (AJPW, 10/22/94)
• w/ Akira Taue vs. Mitsuharu Misawa/Kenta Kobashi (AJPW, 6/9/95)
• w/ Akira Taue vs. Mitsuharu Misawa/Jun Akiyama (AJPW, 12/6/96)

12: SHINYA HASHIMOTO

Has anyone ever been more locked in than Big Hash?

Shinya Hashimoto is the ultimate asskicker. There is nothing more immensely enjoyable or cathathic than the watch him tense up and hit a motherfucker of a roundhouse kick right to his opponent’s gut. He was, with all due respect to (most of) his peers in New Japan, by far the best and most captivating worker in the company in the 90s, and you could argue his coronation as the ace of the promotion was like two years later than it really should’ve been. Hash was larger than life, but also completely grounded in reality, an incredible direct and uncomplicated guy in the Choshu mold that honed the skills he had and felt no desire to escalate to an uncomfortable level like the All Japan crew. When you were that devastating of a striker, a surgical assassin with chops and kicks of all sizes, and the moves in your arsenal like his brainbuster looked as devastating as they did when he performed them, was there really any need to change anything?

The ultimate master of minimalism, Shinya Hashimoto made every movement he made feel like the most intense and important thing you could ever watch. As with other wrestlers on this list, him starting a promotion like ZERO1 with his own unique and compelling vision of what pro wrestling could be is the cherry on top to an incredible legacy.

Recommended Matches:

• vs. Genichiro Tenryu (NJPW, 2/17/94)
• vs. Power Warrior (NJPW, 8/5/94)
• vs. Nobuhiko Takada (NJPW, 4/29/96)
• w/ Yuji Nagata vs. Mitsuharu Misawa/Jun Akiyama (ZERO1, 3/2/01)
• vs. The Great Muta (AJPW, 2/23/03)

11: MITSUHARU MISAWA

It’s not easy being green.

There was a time when I considered taking one of these 1’s off when discussing Mitsuharu Misawa. The more NOAH I’ve watched, though, the more disappointed I am as a week to week worker with him even if it’s understandable given his insane workload in the 90s. He can really turn it up when motivated to on occassion, but generally he comes off very apathetic and uncaring compared to his contemporaries like Akiyama and Kobashi. I wish it was a stronger cap to his career, because at his peak, Misawa was probably the best wrestler I’ve ever seen. Immaculate seller, just awe-inspiringly great and nuanced on that end of things. A dynamo of an offensive wrestler, too, scaling up the offense he picked up as a junior under the Tiger Mask gimmick to devastating effect. King’s Road has been a canonical style in online circles for decades now, and while I understand the pushback, it really was some of the best wrestling ever at its zenith in large part due to Mitsuharu Misawa and what he brought to the table, serving as the stoic foil to more expressive characters and reacting to every change they brought against them with a quiet persistence.

I know a lot of people cannot get into Misawa because of how cold he could come off. Initially, I felt the same way, but something really clicked for me in watching so much of the promotion and his big matches back to back. His demeanor only served to make the rare moments where the mask slipped and he really showed who he was underneath the visage he showed as the ace of All Japan feel that much more impactful. It feels ridiculous to say someone like Misawa is underrated at this point, but I do hope history is kinder on him in a decade than it is now, because he was unreal to watch when he was on top.

Recommended Matches:

• vs. Jumbo Tsuruta (AJPW, 6/8/90)
• vs. Akira Taue (AJPW, 4/15/95)
• vs. Toshiaki Kawada (AJPW, 7/24/95)
• w/ Jun Akiyama vs. Holy Demon Army (AJPW, 12/6/96)
• vs. Kenta Kobashi (AJPW, 1/20/97)

10: JUMBO TSURUTA

Talk about an immense wrestler and career.

Jumbo Tsuruta just came into the business good. He’s probably the biggest natural to ever come into the business, immediately getting it within a matter of months and then steadily progressing throughout his first decade. Some people view him as a guy getting carried in his most notable matches of the 70s by the best guys in the world, but I don’t know how you watch his performances in the Funk, Robinson, and Brisco matches and don’t come away thinking the man was pretty damn great himself. The middle portion of his career is awkward; he’s still great, but he’s missing the fire and spark that made the likes of Choshu and Fujinami so compelling at the same time. It was Choshu’s arrival in All Japan that actually lit that fire under Jumbo’s ass, making him more aggressive and assertive and serving as a catalyst for both the fantastic Genichiro Tenryu feud as well as paving the way for the legendary grumpy Jumbo run that’s the peak of Tsuruta’s career. Jumbo in the early 90s was a tyrant filled with malice and jealousy at a younger generation that dared to steal his spotlight, and with that character he weaved a narrative that highlighted some of the best wrestling ever.

Tsuruta’s another one where it’s not fair how soon he was taken from us. The man clearly had a lot more to give, but as fate would have it, declining health would rob us from Jumbo terrorizing the Pillars and their allies for years and years. I’ll always remember Jumbo for the joy he brought me in both his best and worst moments as a character, a man so desperate to become the top guy that immediately felt his crown slipping and fought like hell to retain his spot.

Recommended Matches:

• vs. Nick Bockwinkel (Big Time Wrestling, 2/14/79)
• vs. Ric Flair (AJPW, 6/8/83)
• vs. Genichiro Tenryu (AJPW, 10/11/89)
• w/ Yoshiaki Yatsu vs. Genichiro Tenryu/Stan Hansen (AJPW, 12/6/89)
• vs. Mitsuharu Misawa (AJPW, 9/1/90)

9: REY MYSTERIO JR.

I think people take Rey for granted.

He’s the best television wrestler in history, and with all respect to the rest of the field, but I don’t think it’s especially close. He’s a king of longevity, remaining at worst a pretty good worker and at best one of the best in the entire world for three decades now. He was just as great at being a spotty fireworks guy in AAA and WCW as he was being a more traditional sympathetic babyface in WWE, which is to say one of the best ever in both roles. There are so many times I’ll watch a Rey match and just be blown away by the way his wrestling mind works, like him hitting a top rope hurricanrana on Tajiri and immediately selling his already hurt leg. It’s stuff that 99% of wrestlers wouldn’t even bother to think of because they’re so focused on getting their shit in and looking good, but Mysterio was remarkable at building matches and selling his ass off to make his perfectly executed comebacks pop even more.

I can understand being lower on Rey if you’re someone that really values insane peaks and a long list of classic matches, but stacking him up against everyone else I routinely come away more impressed at the fact that he can still crank out good matches now in his 50s like it’s nothing.

Recommended Matches:

• vs. Psicosis (AAA, 8/28/95)
• vs. Dean Malenko (WCW, 7/8/96)
• vs. Kurt Angle (WWE, 8/25/02)
• vs. Eddie Guerrero (WWE, 5/22/05)
• vs. Chris Jericho (WWE, 6/28/09)

8: EL HIJO DEL SANTO

It says something that Santito carved out his own legacy as an all time great while carrying the weight of expectations with wearing the mask of his iconic father.

Santo’s my favorite luchador. He mighty not be the most innovative or, but there’s a certain wow factor with him in everything I see him in. He was great in so many different areas, a fantastic title match worker but more than willing to get down and dirty in a personal brawl that painted his legendary silver mask pink with his own blood. He’s one of the great mat technicians in the history of lucha libre, as his encounters with Blue Panther showcase. He’s an exemplary tecnico, just as much the textbook definition of the role as Satanico is to the rudo, and like Satanico he proved himself to be damn good on the other side when he turned in the mid-90s. I feel like you could pop into any Santo match and be shocked at the level of grace and beauty he executed everything with, especially his dives to the outside.

Did Santito have a formula? Sure, but when that formula was as consistent and looked as great as his did, the repetition never truly gets old.

Recommended Matches:

• vs. Espanto Jr. (Mexico, 8/31/86)
• w/ Octagon & Rey Misterio Jr. vs. Blue Panther/Fuerza Guerrera/Psicosis (AAA, 7/15/94)
• vs. Negro Casas vs. El Dandy (CMLL, 12/6/96)
• vs. Negro Casas (CMLL, 9/19/97)
• w/ Villano IV vs. Angel Blanco Jr./El Hijo del Solitario (TXT, 2/25/12)

7: KENTA KOBASHI

The word I immediately associate with Kenta Kobashi’s career is “immense”.

I’m not sure a wrestler has ever wanted the be the greatest of all time the way Kobashi did. He busted his ass to get to the level that he got, and it paid dividends in carving out a legacy for himself in the history of Japanese wrestling. Part of the pushback on the 90s All Japan canon has been a critical re-examination of early 90s Kobashi, someone described as overly exaggerated and crybaby-esque, but I’m sorry, he was every bit as great during that period as he was hyped up to be. Incredibly expressive and emotive in a way that never deterred me, easy to root for when getting bullied by Jumbo or Fuchi or later, Kawada and Taue en route to getting at his more accomplished tag partner. From 1993 on especially he really puts it together and looks like the best wrestler on earth, utilizing a maelstrom of offensive bombs that he would only add to as the decade went on. And as that decade went on, Kobashi slowly began to mature more and more to the point where, still near his physical peak, he became the most complete version of himself late in the decade, dropping the more theatric elements of his character in favor of a more serious and nuanced performer that was just absurdly great in nearly every element of wrestling he put his mind to.

The turn of the decade starts out great for Kobashi, but he soon deals with injury troubles that derails his career and jeopardizes the stability of the promotion he and rival Misawa just founded. Fortunately, he came back strong and went on arguably the greatest run of his career, relying more on his mountains of aura and chops with his athleticism sapped but milking the most drama out of every single moment. Kobashi in NOAH is someone you cannot help but find yourself entranced by as he defies time and reality and becomes this impeccable big match performer and God tier asskicker.

The reality for me is that Kobashi still has a chance at becoming my #1 in a decade’s time. I have yet to see so much of his vaunted GHC title reign, widely accepted as the piece de resistance for his GOAT case, and if it’s anywhere near the level I anticipate it being, the sky is the limit for how high my opinion on his career can grow even further than it already is.

Recommended Matches:

• vs. Stan Hansen (AJPW, 7/29/93)
• vs. Mitsuharu Misawa (AJPW, 1/20/97)
• vs. Mitsuharu Misawa (AJPW, 10/31/98)
• vs. Yoshihiro Takayama (AJPW, 5/26/00)
• vs. Kensuke Sasaki (NOAH, 7/18/05)

6: AJA KONG

With all due respect to all her peers from past and present, this one isn’t especially close.

Aja Kong is the greatest female wrestler of all time.

No one else contains her perfect combination of peaks and longevity, and you could include like 99% of the men when I say that, too. She is the best bully that wrestling has ever seen, a being of pure spite and cruelty at her worst that has terrorized multiple generations of joshi wrestlers over her 40(!!!) year career. She’s a harrowingly violent striker, hitting girls so hard it’ll make you squeamish, and her bombs are appropriately just as brutal too. She excels in the monster role, towering over women with her domineering presence despite not being nearly as tall as an Andre the Giant or even her first major rival in Bull Nakano.

Aja used to be thought of primarily as someone with an impressive peak in the 90’s, similar to Akira Hokuto, but by now I think we can firmly put that idea to bed. Aja was one of the best wrestlers of the 2000s as well, working against a completely different generation of performers in places like GAEA, ARSION and Sendai Girls and looking no less than great. She helped mold workers like Ayako Hamada and Meiko Satomura into the greats that they would become, and it’s not her fault that the joshi industry as a whole wasn’t as stable as it was when she reigned on top of AJW. Thanks to the GAEA Archive, we are still finding new Aja footage to marvel at for years and years to come as well. Even in the 2010s, when she noticeably slowed down, Aja was still able to build an amazing match with her career best opponent in Satomura, and she’s spent the 2020s as an impressive gatekeeping wall for the next generation of joshi stars to get through.

She’s one of the most universal wrestlers to have ever existed. There are only 5 wrestlers to my mind that were ever greater than her, and the thing about Aja Kong is I had to think twice before putting each of them above her.

Recommended Matches:

• vs. Bull Nakano (AJW, 4/25/92)
• vs. Yumiko Hotta (AJW, 1/24/94)
• vs. KAORU (GAEA, 2/13/00)
• vs. Ayako Hamada (Sendai Girls, 7/22/07)
• vs. Meiko Satomura (Sendai Girls, 4/8/16)

5: RIC FLAIR

An institution unto himself.

Flair has been discussed to death, but it’s because he really was that fucking good. A generally insane man who honed that insanity to become the most entertaining professional wrestler of all time. There’s no more definitive a heel champion than Flair, to the point that many others just cosplayed as him with their own runs in their respective companies decades after his peak. If we were judging this stuff purely by number of great matches, Flair might run away with this, like he did in the 2016 poll, but it’s to the point that I think he’s a tad underrated from an input perspective. There were so many layers to the character that he turned up depending on the situation, like his condescension towards Lawler in Memphis making him underestimate the local hero, his rage and jealously towards Ricky Morton making him the most ruthless he’s ever been, or his immense pride and ego forcing him to get into chop battles with Ron Garvin.

As transcendentally great and role defining Flair was as a touring heel, he was a fantastic babyface as well. The Vader match at Starrcade 93 is maybe my all time favorite Flair match, and his promo in the lead-up to it never fails to give me chills (could you believe I haven’t even brought up his status as one of the greatest talkers ever yet?). People love the 1989 Steamboat trilogy, and while I recognize the greatness of that work, I’ve always been more enamored with the Funk duology that sees him put on some of the best babyface work of his career.

Even from the longevity aspect, I think Flair’s given a bad rap. For one, I don’t hold late stage WCW against anyone’s case. For two, while he was at a crisis of confidence early into his second WWE stint in the 2000s, he slowly but surely regained that confidence and was one of the most consistent workers on the roster for much of the decade. Hell, he even developed a garbage wrestling phase wrestling Big Show in WWECW and having a big grudge match with Mick Foley at SummerSlam in 2006. I don’t think that work is an embarassment to his legacy at all, and actually adds to his case.

Ric Flair discussion is exhausting, I get it. After reading like 50 pages on the PWO forum about the man, plus his own alleged evils, there’s little I want to do less than spend my time droning on and on about Flair’s case, but it really is nearly bulletproof to me.

Recommended Matches:

• vs. Ricky Morton (JCP, 7/5/86)
• vs. Ron Garvin (JCP, 9/25/87)
• vs. Terry Funk (WCW, 7/23/89)
• vs. Big Van Vader (WCW, 12/27/93)
• vs. Mick Foley (WWE, 8/20/06)

4. GENICHIRO TENRYU

How the tide has swung in Genichiro Tenryu’s favor.

With the downswing in consideration for the Pillars and even rival Jumbo Tsuruta came an upswing for Tenryu and his more direct brand of wrestling violence. People have less time for the sprawling 40+ minute epics with callbacks to previous finishes than they do to matches half that time all built around spiteful punches and powerbombing motherfuckers through the ring mat, and who am I to tell them they’re wrong? At his best, Tenryu was a genuinely otherwordly performer, the linchpin for the greatest interpromotional feud of all time with WAR vs. New Japan in addition to adding greatly to a few other of its ilk, and that was after it all clicked for him in Baba’s promotion and he transformed into one of the best wrestlers of the mid to late 80s.

I’m not sure a wrestler has ever been able to convey contempt or disgust as well as Tenryu did. The way that he mocks a bloody Fujinami after their match in the Tokyo Dome in 1996 is exactly indicative of the kind of performer he was, a complete and total asshole as an antagonist and one who served as a perfect contrast to some of the most likable babyfaces in the country (Hashimoto, Onita, etc). His feud with Jumbo is one of the best ever, drawn out over years until his departure from the promotion, and it actually sees him on the complete opposite spectrum from the one that you’re accustomed to seeing him in.

The crown jewel to Tenryu’s case is his longevity, which only a select few could even hope to match up to. Great wrestlers fell off, died, or retired in the time between Tenryu’s first years as a great wrestler between the mid 1980s until his last match in 2015. In that time, he was excellent up until the very end; even with his body completely broken down, the human mind cannot help but will him to great performances as a spiteful and cantankerous old bastard taking it out on the youth. Even if he didn’t jump off the page immediately like Jumbo did, when you factor in how awesome he was for the amount of time he was an active performer, it is pretty staggering to think about.

Genichiro Tenryu is a worthy contender for greatest wrestler of all time. I heavily considered him for the #1 spot myself, and while time will tell where I stand on everyone on this list in a decade’s time, I have no real worries that Tenryu will fade in my memory.

Recommended Matches:

• vs. Jumbo Tsuruta (AJPW, 6/5/89)
• w/ Stan Hansen vs. Giant Baba/Rusher Kimura (AJPW, 12/6/89)
• vs. Shinya Hashimoto (WAR, 6/17/93)
• vs. Tatsumi Fujinami (NJPW, 4/29/96)
• vs. KENTA (NOAH, 10/8/05)

3. YOSHIAKI FUJIWARA

What is the name of this blog?

The greatest defensive wrestler of all time, bar none. I pop for Fujiwara slightly turning his body to the side to lessen the impact of a kick from his opponent the way people pop for diving topes. He is literally a one of a kind performer, someone who forces his opponent to wrestle both him and themselves as he tricks them into all kinds of setups to lock in a definitive submission with that wry fucking smirk on his face.

He’s right up there with Han and Tamura as the best shoot stylist of all time, a generationally great mat worker with the ability to mine incredible drama over a hold or submission with his excellent body movement and facial expressions. As a pro, he’s arguably even better, standing out amidst the less mat-oriented workers in New Japan as an anomaly and proving himself just as compelling on his feet. As I said, incredible defensive spots, knowing when to check a kick, when to narrowly block a kick to the body, when to duck his head from an enzuigiri and everything else you could hope for. A wonderfully mean bastard, too, wielding the greatest headbutt ever to such incredible effect in addition to the gorgeous punches to the face or body he’ll throw in out of nowhere.

Part of what gets Fujiwara this far is his geniusness as well as his longevity. Much like Tenryu, he was great for a real long time, and while not one of the outright best wrestlers in the world for stretches in the 2000s, Fujiwara was still fucking awesome during this decade battling the likes of Naoya Ogawa or teaming with Shinya Hashimoto in ZERO1 or battling his protege Minoru Suzuki on a BML show. He stayed awesome into the 2010s, adding a lot to those Kana Pro tags and various other produce shows. The man is still going today, a shriveled up old man that resembles post-Rose Isaac Netero and is just as sharp still in his advanced age.

The other part of what gets Fujiwara this high, and over hefty competition in Tenryu, is his influence. There are so many things directly attributed to his name that I either deeply appreciate or outright love that would not be what they are today without him. For one, look at who the man trained; at least five of his trainees made my list, even more were serious considerations for making my list, and even more than that are well respected and made plenty of ballots! In addition to that, he greatly helped get the original UWF off the ground, greatly contributed to UWF 2.0 being maybe the best promotion ever, and founded his own promotion in PWFG that had some awesome matches as well. His style undoubtedly helped get MMA as a sport off the ground as well. Without Fujiwara there’s a reasonable argument that you wouldn’t have Battlarts, ARSION, FUTEN, Kandori/Hokuto, Tanahashi/MiSU, and countless other things as you know them today.

Yoshiaki Fujiwara is a gift to professional wrestling. It is both sad and pathetic that he will probably never get into the WON Hall of Fame despite being one of the most important figures in Japanese wrestling history, and on the upper echelon of great performers in all of history as well. I for one will never stop posting Fujiwara propaganda on this blog or elsewhere until he gets the proper respect he deserves.

Recommended Matches:

• vs. Super Tiger (UWF, 12/5/84)
• vs. Antonio Inoki (NJPW, 2/6/86)
• vs. Riki Choshu (NJPW, 6/9/87)
• vs. Kazuo Yamazaki (UWF, 7/24/89)
• vs. Nobuhiko Takada (UWF, 10/25/90)

2. BRYAN DANIELSON

God.

He was my #1 until the very last day before I voted. He really and truly was.

Bryan Danielson is the best wrestler of this century. He has a legitimate claim for being the best wrestlers of three consecutive decades (half-decade for the 2020s, at least), which is mind-boggling. He was already so great at a young age, cracking the top TWENTY of the DVDVR top 500 in late 2001. So great that Nick Bockwinkel even took notice in a now legendary story. He spent the majority of the next decade as the defining indie worker of an entire generation, having incredible matches with Low Ki in the beginning of the decade and going on to have one of the most defining feuds of the entire indie era with Nigel McGuiness. He took the reigns from indie greats like Samoa Joe and CM Punk when the former spent more time on TV in TNA and the latter got signed to WWE developmental, and while the merits of his ROH title run have become a hot button of discussion in recent years, the hits are some of the best in the history of independent wrestling to me, and that’s not even mentioning his best stuff outside that environment like his encounter with Necro Butcher in PWG or the super underrated BOLA 2008 match with Chris Hero.

The thing that shot Bryan up to serious GOAT contention was his WWE run. CM Punk was the first of the indie boom stars to really make it big in the company, but Bryan shattered the glass ceiling above him and became the most over star the company had since Austin and Rock were regulars on television. He was completely undeniable, even as the dumbest wrestling promotion on earth continued to try and deny him and the fans’ desire to see him become the guy. His big wins against Cena and later the WrestleMania 30 masterclass are still some of the most catharthic babyface victories ever, and it only made it that much more richer five years later when Bryan was on the complete opposite end to that kind of feel good victory in putting over Kofi Kingston as the heel he always showed he had the potential to be.

His AEW run…man. Danielson managed to fuse the best aspects of the first two decades of his career together to put together, at his best, the most complete performances he’s ever had. In AEW, Danielson took the valuable lessons he learned becoming the biggest babyface of his generation and added it onto the skills he never forgot when he was the American Dragon, and it was fucking surreal to watch. All the incredible striking, matwork, offense, and mechanical selling mixed with a master-like crowd connection that made fans really buy into everything he did, whether it was making a drawn-out comeback as a babyface against Jon Moxley or doing jumping jacks as a heel to get heat in a world title epic with Hangman Page. He added to his status as an incredible TV worker with amazing matches with everyone from Eddie Kingston to Page to Ricky Starks to RUSH to Christian Cage, and he made it all feel truly distinct and memorable.

The WWE run in some ways felt limiting compared to the kinds of stuff Danielson showed himself capable of on the indies, but those limitations also served as a benefit to him and his sometimes overly ambitious mind in other places that broke containment a couple times in his final run, unfortunately. The misfires weren’t plentiful, but they are somewhat damning for his case as the GOAT. The fact that he still made it this far for me should tell you just how much I value the other 98%.

I hope in a decade we can have a more normal, nuanced conversation about Bryan in both his strengths and weaknesses rather than people yelling about how anyone who doesn’t have him #1 or top 5 or on their list at all is an idiot or anyone who does have him #1 should watch more wrestling or doesn’t know enough about the sport to be making a list. He was an all-time great, he’ll probably always be one of my three favorite wrestlers ever, and I will greatly miss him in his seemingly permanent retirement.

Recommended Matches:

• vs. Low Ki (ROH, 3/30/02)
• vs. Samoa Joe (ROH, 10/2/04)
• vs. Nigel McGuiness (ROH, 2/23/08)
• vs. Randy Orton (WWE, 12/16/13)
• vs. Hangman Adam Page (AEW, 12/15/21)

1. TERRY FUNK

Who else could it be.

Terry Funk is professional wrestling. He just is.

I was having a discussion with friends on Discord about how few degrees of separation you have to have to connect Terry Funk to some of the lowest midcarders on AEW today, and it’s insane how little steps you have to take to get there. He is the protagonist of the book you write professional wrestling about. With the exception of lucha libre, joshi, and shoot style, Terry Funk’s career path will take you through so many different eras, promotions, and styles over the course of decades and decades. Who else do you know could have an all time classic NWA title match in 1977 with Harley Race and then, two decades later, have a gritty barbed wire title match with Sabu in ECW? Who do you know that had the variance of brawls like Funk did with his brother vs. Sheik and Abby in the 70s, Stan Hansen in the 80s, and Cactus Jack in the 90s? Who do you know could contribute to two of the greatest spectacle matches ever in the Jerry Lawler empty arena match and the Atsushi Onita No Ropes Barbed Wire Time Bomb Death Match over a decade apart from each other?

There is nothing in my mind that could convince me that Terry Funk couldn’t do anything he set his mind to in a wrestling ring. Who else do you know could reasonably answer the claim to being one of the five best babyfaces and five best heels in all of wrestling history? Mind you, wrestling COMPLETELY differently in his different personas of heel and face over the years? Memphis heel Terry Funk doesn’t look like the heel that piledrove Ric Flair through a table in 1989, who doesn’t look like Stud Stable alumni heel Funk who terrorized that egg sucking dog Dusty Rhodes’s son Dustin in WCW; likewise, the babyface that became the most over wrestler in All Japan doesn’t work like the lovable old man in ECW fighting against wrestlers decades younger than him,

The guy never fucking lost it, either. As he got older and older, Terry Funk simply adapted to whatever changes were around him, while still remaining deeply himself over the years. When the body breaks down, it’s the mind that is a wrestler’s greatest attribute, and a combination of Funk’s ingenious mind and his never-failing fists always kept him at the very worst an interesting wrestler to watch well into the final years of his career.

It’s the Funker, man. He did it his way, and he did it because he loved it that way. The greatest wrestler of all time.

Recommended Matches:

• vs. Jumbo Tsuruta (AJPW, 6/11/76)
• w/ Dory Funk Jr. vs. Abdullah the Butcher/The Sheik (AJPW, 7/15/79)
• vs. Jerry Lawler (CWA, 4/6/81)
• vs. Stan Hansen (AJPW, 4/14/83)
• vs. Atsushi Onita (FMW, 5/5/93)

That’s the list! Thank you to everyone who sat and read through this behemoth of a post, I appreciate all of you for taking the time to support me as I rambled on about who I thought the best to ever do it were. I hope that you voted in the 2026 GWE poll, and if not, I hope you continue watching wrestling and feel comfortable to vote in a decade’s time.