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The 411 Wrestling Top 5: The Top 5 Favorite Acts in Wrestling
The 411 Wrestling Top 5: Hello everyone and welcome to 411 Wrestling’s Top 5 List. We take a topic each week and all the writers here on 411 wrestling will have the ability to participate and give us their Top 5 on said topic. So, onto this week’s topic…
Week 337 – The Top 5 Favorite Acts in Wrestling
At this time, who are your top 5 favorite acts in pro wrestling?
J Onwuka
5. War Machine – At the present moment nobody’s doing the power tag team better than War Machine and, even if anybody was giving it ago, they’d find it tough to top these guys. Their ROH booking (like the entirety of ROH’s recent booking) leaves a lot to be desired but their act has always been on point. I really wish that they were getting more quality feuds in but I’ll be happy if this team stays together a couple more years. There are those who don’t give them the time of day but they’ve shown excellent stuff vs Killer Elite Squad and I think they’ll excel whenever they can face a team that’s on their level. Looking forward especially to their inevitable title match vs the Briscoes, hoping it’ll be in a regular match setting. I also hope that ROH can convince either NOAH to drop the GHC belts to them or just get NJPW/NOAH to send KES over to ROH for an extended tour/blood feud with War Machine.
4. Catch Point – As I’ve written about in a Medium post, I had hoped that EVOLVE would start out with a much stronger focus on grappling and scientific wrestling but that’s not the vibe I got. Catch Point is, in a stable, what I was basically waiting for. They have a great range of guys from Drew Gulak, the hard-nosed captain, to the mesmerizing TJP, brash Matt Riddle, the prospect Williams and the new kid Yehi. None of them really wrestles the same as the other but you can see where the similarity is that’d bring them together. As far as draws to EVOLVE to me it’s between these guys and Heroes Eventually Die, with Catch Point in the main position.
3. Pentagon Jr – This pick for me is total mark out. Depending on when these things go up, I’ve got a bit on Lucha Underground recently posted or coming up. If you’ve read it you’ll know that I’m in no way an LU lifer. But Pentagon Jr is just cool as shit. I can’t really explain it but all morning I’ve been going “CERO. MIIIIEEEEEDOOOOOO.”
2. Jay Lethal – Jay Lethal is the Bret Hart of our generation and he might even have more range character-wise, as he’s been involved in a lot of straight-up comedic stuff. But he’s the Hart because he doesn’t have a gimmick other than being really, really good at pro wrestling. He doesn’t do the type of promos that really electrify the crowd but they get his point across and they make him look strong. It doesn’t matter who you put him with, he will come out of there with a good match. His time on top has been a bit stagnant as there aren’t a whole lot of buzz-worthy challengers but there’s a very good reason that they’ve never left Lethal without a belt in over two yeras.
1. Los Ingobernables de Japon – Before too long I bet we will see Bullet Club vs LIJ with the BizCliz being positioned as the faces, just like Bullet Club turned the former top heels CHAOS when they arrived. I’m sure that LIJ will not stop being popular which sort of hurts their credibility as heels. But, like the clearly villainous Pentagon Jr, this is all about cool for me. LIJ is Japanese guys broadly running the BizCliz “we’ll interfere in whatever we don’t give a fuck” gimmick, but what LIJ has over Bullet Club is that all of the members are very engaging in their own right. Bullet Club is like the nWo or a motorcycle gang. Los Ingobernables de Japon defy classification. Everybody’s so different. We might be at the peak of their run right now, especially as they’ve introduced their first gimmick-less hanger-on in SANADA, but at this writing they’re the group that’s been setting the world on fire and not looking back.
Kevin Pantoja
5. Pentagon Jr. – Lucha Underground is favorite weekly wrestling television show and Pentagon Jr. is my favorite performer on that program. In season one, he started out a bit slow but once he got to breaking arms and cutting promos, he became captivating TV. His rivalry with Vampiro was one of the most interesting angles that Lucha Underground has run so far. The twist after the Cero Miedo match was excellently handled and so far Pentagon has picked up right where he left off in season two. There is a certain star quality about him that just leaps off the screen and grabs you. His popularity is climbing at insane speed and his recent appearances in various indy promotions have become must see. If Pentagon Jr. is in your town, go see him.
4. AJ Styles – Since I first saw him in 2005, AJ Styles has been my favorite wrestler. He caught my eye in TNA and I’ve loved nearly everything he’s done since then. Yes, even his time as a comedy heel in TNA. When he went to New Japan, it was one of the things that made me go out of my way to watch that product. Now, I see him weekly in the one place I never expected him to be. The WWE. There aren’t many people that I make sure to watch every single time they appear, no matter how big the match or how small the segment, but AJ Styles is one of them. There is nobody that I enjoy watching in the ring more than Styles.
3. New Day – In late 2014, the New Day formed and came off as babyface flops. It wasn’t until they started turning heel slightly after WrestleMania 31 when things started turning around. Since then, they’ve had great matches with Tyson Kidd and Cesaro, the Usos and the Lucha Dragons. They’ve also racked up two Tag Team Title reigns, including one that is currently running for over 200 days. If I told you what the New Day did on a weekly basis, you’d probably say that could never work. However, the ability and charisma of Xavier Woods, Kofi Kingston and Big E makes it all work. From Francesca the trombone to Booty-O’s to the random dancing and everything in between, New Day just works. They have their finger on the pulse of what is hot in pop culture and use it to their benefit. They are the most entertaining thing in the WWE right now.
2. Sasha Banks – While AJ Styles has been my favorite wrestler since 2005, only one person has been able to challenge that. For some reason, I just connected with Sasha Banks. Any time she was involved in a match, I rooted for her against everyone. Even the lovable Bayley. When Sasha got her first NXT Women’s Title shot at TakeOver: R-Evolution, my heart raced and my palms were sweaty in a way that doesn’t often happen. Since then, every single time she has a title match, I find myself joyfully nervous. When she didn’t win the Women’s Title at WrestleMania this year, it ruined the show for me. I was like a kid again, furious that my favorite lost to the point where I couldn’t enjoy the rest of the show (though after the Women’s match it was pretty dire). Everything about Sasha Banks screams star and I love everything about Sasha Banks.
1. Tetsuya Naito – Man, a year ago, Tetsuya Naito would have never been anywhere near a list of my favorite anythings. He was the whitest of white meat babyfaces and was kind of just there. Then he returned from CMLL as a member of Los Ingobernables and began to display an air of “I don’t care about anything” attitude. It proved to be the best thing that NJPW did in the past several months. He has absolutely nailed his character like nobody else in Japan. The guy became captivating TV and it led him to the IWGP Heavyweight Title. A title that he earned a shot at after winning the G1 Climax in 2013 only for the fans to turn on his big push. When he captured the title on April 10th, the crowd reacted more positively to him than they did to Kazuchika Okada. Naito is gold and he’s the most entertaining persona in all of wrestling.
Wyatt Beougher
5. Zack Sabre Jr – First off, limiting this to five was an exercise in agony, as my honorable mention list would probably have ten to fifteen people on it – Cesaro, Sami Zayn, Kevin Owens, Shinsuke Nakamura, Samoa Joe, Finn Balor, KUSHIDA, the MCMG, American Alpha – the list goes on and on. So what earned ZSJ this spot? I was already aware of Sabre Jr prior to this year, having seen some of his work in wXw (thanks to his match with Bryan Danielson) and the various other promotions he has worked in, but I had never actually gone out of my way to seek out his matches, always waiting for word of mouth to find and watch them. That all changed when Daniel Bryan officially retired and I found myself with a goat-man sized hole in my fandom. Sabre is absolutely his own man, but I get the same feeling watching his matches that I did watching AmDrag’s, so he has essentially filled that hole for me.
4. Sasha Banks – If, when Sasha Banks had debuted in NXT, you had told me that she would be one of the best women’s wrestlers in the world and would portray her character so convincingly that I’d laud her for it, I would have looked at you like you were crazy. But then she looked into the women’s dressing room mirror at Full Sail University (which I think may have been the basis for the WWE Studios film Oculus) and it transformed her into The Boss. The rest, as they say, is history, and if Sasha were actually on my television more, she would probably be higher on this list.
3. Bray Wyatt and the Wyatt Family – Over the past two years that I’ve been writing for the Wrestling Zone, probably at least 10% of my sporadic columns have featured Bray Wyatt either directly or indirectly, so it makes sense that he would be on this list. Realistically, Bray and the Wyatt Family should be at the top of the list, but with Bray and Luke Harper both injured and their booking still terrible for large portions of time, I can’t in good conscience put them any higher. In spite of losing any feud that sees them involved with anyone higher than the midcard and never actually achieving any of their goals, Bray’s charisma is enough to keep them this high on my list.
2. New Day – The reigning tag team champions are often criticized for being all entertainment and no sport, but they’ve had some very good matches over the course of the past year, and even if the match itself isn’t a five-star classic, there’s almost always a cool finish that involves something that makes my poor black smark heart grow three sizes, whether it’s Big E catching an Uso coming off the top rope for a splash and turning it into a Big Ending or Xavier using Francesca/Francesca II to allow Kofi to shake off the bonds of gravity. And while their face turn has done exactly what a lot of fans feared it would by limiting their ring work mostly to catchphrases, it hasn’t been nearly as bad as I had expected it to be, and New Day’s personality is still shining through.
1. Fenix – Pentagon Jr gets way more love than his real-life brother, but every time Fenix steps into the ring, I’m transported back to being fifteen or sixteen years old and watching Rey Misterio Jr. Fenix isn’t my favorite wrestler on the list, at least in terms of pure wrestling ability, but there isn’t anyone else plying their craft right now that I’d rather watch. Every time he steps into the ring in Lucha Underground, you’re going to see something that either leaves you speechless, takes your breath away, or both, and while I love the psychological aspects of wrestling more than the purely physical ones, sometimes you just need a match that drops your jaw and leaves you feeling like a kid again. Fenix is so good that he does that seemingly effortlessly, and I know when he’s in a match, I’m going to enjoy it.
Rob Stewart
5. The Monster Matanza Cueto – First off, for transparency’s sake, this list changes and shuffles almost weekly. If I had to do this list last week or next week, it would be likely be at least slightly different. And lately, I’ve really been enjoying the booking of Dario Cueto’s cannibalistic brother. As far as being a vicious, unstoppable hurricane of a wrestler goes, Matanza is booked as well as anyone in the business not named Lesnar, and the moves he is able to pull off in the ring are incredible given his size and power. Lucha Underground has been telling a great story of Matanza running through the roster (speaking of which, his debut at Aztec Warfare was as spectacularly booked of a debut as anybody could want), and it will be a lot of fun to see where he goes from here.
4. Enzo Amore & Big Cass – These two have simply been brilliant since their move up to WWE, and Enzo is establishing himself as possibly the best improviser and most fun trash-talker on the roster. And, unlike a lot of historical teams with the dynamic of a talker and a more physical guy, Big Cas is also a highly entertaining speaker in his own right. They have become must-watch-TV in the last few weeks.
3. Shinsuke Nakamura – I originally had Seth Rollins in this spot before I decided to exclude injured talent and just go with my favorite acts of the moment. Nakamura is a ball of pure charisma and excitement, and hell, I’d put him on the list if only for his ring entrance alone, which is one of the two best around (but more on that later). For a guy with at least somewhat of a language barrier with English speakers, he still manages to be magnetic just with his mannerisms and movements. Of course, this is all to say nothing of the fact that he’s one of the very best workers in the entire world, and his match with Sami Zayn (himself an Honorable Mention to this list) is likely the match of 2016 to this point.
2. New Day – No explanation needed, am I right? What can even be said about New Day that hasn’t already been said in the last year? They are absolute geniuses when it comes to knowing how to entertain and connect with an audience. And what’s even more incredible is that they’ve done it with two guys –Kofi Kingston and Big E–who I barely cared about at all about 18 months ago. Just goes to show how far it goes when you let talent just be themselves.
1. Finn Balor – The other guy who I’d watch just for his captivating ring entrance alone, Balor is a guy who also has the in-ring and microphone skills to be a WWE main eventer for years to come. Balor has become the guy that I as a fan have been the most invested in since Daniel Bryan through his lead-up to WrestleMania 30, and hopefully in a few years he’ll have as good of a moment on ‘Mania as The American Dragon did.
List your Top Five for this week’s topic in the comment section using the following format:
5. CHOICE: Explanation
4. CHOICE: Explanation
3. CHOICE: Explanation
2. CHOICE: Explanation
1. CHOICE: Explanation
