GOTNW

Zeb and Lana did the heavy lifting in that program, not to mention how perfectly timed it was, how logical Swagger's motivations were and how the crowd had been showing tendencies towards supporting Swagger for months.Also you are greatly underestimating how great of a fake russian Honma would make.

How many people are actually voting via "japan=better" logic? Honma has enough great performances in tags with Nagata/Shibata/whomever that I'd vote him over Rusev even if he didn't have a plethora of great singles matches that he does. Insert Rusev into any other promotion and he'd be getting substantially less support.

Cena wins via having one more high end match than MiSu and his high end stuff being better, though both guys have made it further then they should've had.

Because waving a flag really hard is an unprecedented accomplishment that will permanently change the landscape of professional wrestling. It was a logical improvisation in a throwaway segment. Honma is still better. I think the failure of GOTNW to recognize this as a joke more than justifies a vote against Honma. His response was amusing, the OP was not. It's telling that the only argument for Rusev is "a joke" and no one has bothered to explain why he is better.

Yeah but did he ever save the day when a flag won't unfurl by grabbing another nearby flag and waving it hard? Because waving a flag really hard is an unprecedented accomplishment that will permanently change the landscape of professional wrestling. It was a logical improvisation in a throwaway segment. Honma is still better.

Honma is a far better worker than Rusev and I don't see what Rusev brings to compensate that. His act is fine. It's a rare ocassion of WWE actually being in touch with current affairs. He was booked well. But so what?

This is just how I recall it and not factual information but when he started working BJW in ~2013 he started stiffing the shit out of people with them on a level that words cannot describe. Like, you would totally buy him KOing Ikeda with them. He probably took 20 years off of Kazuki Hashimoto's lifespan. They were just sold accordingly and eventually became a myth of sorts.

Embrace Honma.

And my counter to your line of thought would be that Ibushi has a different role to play in his matches so you can't have him take 90% of the match like Suzuki did against Okada. Now I don't think there's any chance Ibushi could make a situation like that work nearly as much as Suzuki did but it's easier to pinpoint to a performance where Suzuki carries the entire body of the match with limbwork as a "great" one. But, he got (what I at least thought) was a REALLY good, perhaps even great match-out of Shuji Kondo. And I'd say the Wrestle Kingdom Nakamura match was an equal effort. Also outside of the two matches your mentioned there's next to nothing to help Suzuki's case while Ibushi has matches against Ishii, Ricochet, Honma, HARASHIMA etc. going for him. Suzuki is certainly a worker of a higher aptitude than Ibushi but that doesn't mean much without the work to back it up.

Well it's obvius to which group I belong but I don't think there's really much merit in this discussion. Everyone likes Minoru Suzuki more as he is a more capable worker and a better overall talent but Ibushi had a better year than him. MiSu is still going to get a lot of votes but that's more because of who he is rather than because of the year he had.

Rush would turn Russia face.

Seriously? I like Rusev but no way he was the best worker in his company alone.

And Luke Harper, Cesaro, Goldust etc.

I've got the following for Nagata off the top of my head: vs Sugiura for the GHC Title vs Marufuji for the GHC Title vs Ishii-G1 Climax vs Nakamura-G1 Climax vs Shibata-G1 Climax tags vs Shibata/Goto vs Chris Hero-Global League vs Masato Tanaka-Global League plus THIS happened during the voting period: Come on. Tanahashi doesn't have a GIF nearly as cool as that one. 15-3=12 14-3=11 So I win Cena got a very good match out of Ryback on that UK show and has generally fared well with lesser workers except Randy Orton. Tanahashi-not so much.....

Er ist nicht. Namedrop then. Almost. It's "Ist er nicht!". Guys better than Cena, in no order: 1. Sami Zayn 2. Finn Balor 3. Adrian Neville 4. Cesaro 5. Daniel Bryan 6. Brock Lesnar 7. Randy Orton 8. Seth Rollins 9. HHH 10. Dolph Ziggler 11. Luke Harper 12. Bray Wyatt 13. Dean Ambrose 14. Rusev I would rather watch any match of them than Cena's stale act. And now it's YOUR turn. Which 14 wrestlers are better in NJPW than Tanahashi? Yeah I have personal preference as well but arguments for half of those guy over Cena in the time period eligible would be ludicrous. Meanwhile, guys in New Japan I can easily make arguments for being better in the time period than Tanahashi: Nakamura, Ishii, Honma, Ibushi, Kojima, Okada, KUSHIDA, Minoru Suzuki, Shibata, AJ Styles, Karl Anderson, Naito, Makabe, Nagata, Liger,

Er ist nicht. Namedrop then.

Tanahashi is like the 15th best guy in New Japan.

I like Ryback and always have. Devitt has never done much for me, whether as bland junior face, Bullet Club leader or during his stint in NXT. But in terms of actual wrestling capability.........come on now. Balor in a walk.

Tanahashi is more consistent, but after seeing Cena carry Bray fucking Wyatt to a great WWE garbage match (and we're talking about my least favourite pro wrestling genre here) I have to go with him.

This is (at least) the third time he beat Tanahashi. So......nope.

Goto is the most overrated contemporary japanese wrestler. Rush is great. Easy call.

I like MiSu A LOT MORE. I'm pretty sure everyone does. When he's on he's way better than Sekimoto and smokes him in absolutely every aspect of professional wrestling. And I'm pretty sure he's going to win in this match-up. I am not exactly an especially big fan of Sekimoto, seeing he's probably my seventh favourite BJW guy or so. But I fully believe he had a better year than MiSu. A lot of that is because of how he was constantly put in positions to have great matches while MiSu was lost in the shuffle, but it's true regardless.

Throwing a support vote for Akiyama so he doesn't get completely annihilated. I'd agree with Dylan that Harper is more consistent than Akiyama and that Akiyama's highs are higher than Harper's, although Akiyama is consistently good in his own right and his best matches were significantly better than Harper's. I think I might've leaned towards voting for Harper regardless but fuck it, it's not like Akiyama has any chance of winning anyway....

I REALLY like Titus and am confused as to why WWE doesn't use a charismatic worker like him better. Those Big E matches on Superstars were way better than I'd have ever expected. He got some WOTYC hype at PWO I believe which was going overboard but it's easy to see why he did. AR Fox just kills himself doing flips. I haven't seen him do anything particularly offensive or stupid (in regard to the quality of his matches and not his own health/safety) but he does nothing for me.

Cesaro is an amazing performer, is a lot more versatile than Ishii, is probably the only guy in WWE that successfully uses matwork in structuring his matches in an engaging way and without the fans chanting random shit during it, has amazing offence and great cut offs, his team with Tyson Kidd has been really good and the match they had against Lucha Dragons was way better than I expected it to be. Their use of blind tags is really clever and they have a lot of neat double teams. With that said, this is an easy vote for Ishii. It was a down year for Cesaro and Ishii got more high profile matches than ever and thrived in that environment.