SturmCRF

1. Bret Hart 2. Bryan Danielson 3. Will Ospreay 4. Mick Foley 5. Tomohiro Ishii 6. Masato Tanaka 7. Sasha Banks 8. Shinsuke Nakamura 9. Kenny Omega 10. CM Punk This is what I came up with for an off the top of my head favourites list. Despite seemingly spending half my life watching wrestling for over 30 years, I just haven't seen enough outside of WWE, ECW, 2010 onwards NJPW and AEW to honestly rank a Kobashi or a Bockwinkel or even a Vader (WWF brainwashing steered me clear from almost all WCW while it was current). I wish I made more/any time for historical viewing, but I'm too focused on keeping up with current stuff, so it's only ever going to be the occasional match. Kota Ibushi and Shingo Takagi not being on the list feels wrong, but Kenny and his mate CM just edge it today.

While Yujiro is of course objectively very bad, as someone who spent actual money on whichever filler PPV it was where Okada defended the title against him, just on the off chance that Gedo pulled the trigger on giving the big belt to the man who at that time had the best entrance music in wrestling, I'd be up for him main eventing a Wrestle Kingdom.

Surely the right move is Moxley holds it til the Dome, Shota wins the G1 and beats him for it in January. The only hitches are that the booking is all over the place at the moment, and Shota doesn't deserve a title with his current haircut.

I must have watched 30 hours of wrestling this weekend, and the opening tag match on this show is my second favourite at worst. I don't know what has happened to Bron Breakker, maybe Axiom and Frazer are just that good, but he looked like an actual megastar, rather than someone who just fits the bill enough that he'll be pushed like one whether I like it or not.

Ospreay vs Shibata and Swerve vs Takeshita on the same show, I fucking love pro wrestling.

I'd fucking love Goto to win the title. Tsuji will have his time, but Goto deserves to finally have his moment after getting geeked out by Okada and joining Chaos.

I really hope you're wrong about Naito. I'm so bored by him, I can feel myself turning into a David Finlay cheerleader if that's the only shot at getting the title off him in the next 10 months.

I love most things AEW do, but those tournament brackets are disgracefully bad. They couldn't even stretch to 16 teams?! If you bring in maybe two NJPW teams (don't need to be Japan based either, why not West Coast Wrecking Crew?), two CMLL and two indy teams, you can easily make a 32 team bracket. Not this bullshit procession to Bucks getting a win back over FTR in the final. Where are Moxley and Claudio? Gates Of Agony? You gave Lionhook their silly team name, sling them in the mix to progress their storyline a bit. The Gunns, The Acclaimed, does having a six man tag title make them allergic to normal tag matches? AEW is so great when it ignores all the silly unwritten rules that WWE falls back on, I wish they could have ignored the one that says wrestling fans are too dim to understand large and complex tournaments, you know, like they have in nearly every other sport.

Yeah, I'm fine with the Jack Perry thing, I've been enjoying HOT a bit more since Kanemaru and Narita joined, but Chase over Ishii is bullshit. I know he's a tag champ (why, though?!) and Ishii isn't pushed, but they know what they have in Ishii, he always seems to be one of the first names in demand for Rev Pro and AEW shows, and I don't get why they wouldn't want to maximise him when two of the best wrestlers in the world have left the company. If he's going to lose in the first round, at least let him have a 15 minute banger with one of the young guys, but nope, they're losing in the first round too for some fucking reason. Bastards had better put the big boy belt on ZSJ soon.

I guess they didn't specify who those prayers should be to.

AEW are really missing out on our £30 by not having a 'This is Rampage Baby' baby onesie. Also, not a Saturday morning goes by when I don't sing 'This is make or break, my balls are made of stone' during the looping theme song ad break on Fite.

On the long title reigns issue, there's nothing inherently wrong with them, they can be great if they're done well, but they're absolute death to my interest as soon as it's telegraphed that they're going to be long. Almost as soon as MJF won the AEW title, he was out there bragging about how long he was going to hold it, he had his custom belt, and you knew he wasn't dropping it for the best part of a year. Most of the drama got sucked out of everything he did from then on. Hiromu's recent Jr Title run became largely boring as soon as he started talking about beating the record for defences. WWE is barely watchable because they have five hours of TV a week that can hardly even bother to pretend there's any chance you'll see anything noteworthy happen, cos Gunther or Roman or even Seth are unlikely to be dethroned on a lesser PPV, let alone Raw or Smackdown. There's a delicate balancing act where you can book an epic title reign to only reveal itself as such gradually, but I can't remember the last time I saw anyone manage it.

Maybe with Wardlow, it's just that people really respond to the Virgil/Alex Riley/Damien Mizdow disrespected henchman storyline, and it doesn't give an accurate reading of a wrestler's default level of overness without some dickhead bullying them or treating them like a lackey. Every time it goes wrong like this, I appreciate Batista a little more.

Do the mods have a secret administrator function that will highlight certain posts next time a particular user, let's say Coach Tony, visits the board?

Yeah, I've gone from hoping he survives climbing Mount Everest because it's dangerous to climb Mount Everest, to hoping he survives whatever things he might be planning to do there. Absolute loon, and also one of the best wrestlers in the world who looks totally credible against basically anyone, even when they're twice his size.