Revisiting My 2020 #TheChris100 Ballot

In 2020, Eddie Kingston was my only representative from the three biggest promotions in the world. Would that have stuck if I did a 2020 ranking now?

With 2021's #TheChris100 looming, I want to do a few posts over the next few weeks to keep myself and perhaps you in the mindset for the poll. So to start it off, I thought I'd revisit my own personal ballot almost a full year later to see how my opinion might have changed since last winter. Here's what I submitted:

1. Kaito Kiyomiya
2. Masashi Takeda
3. El Hijo de Fishman
4. Wotan
5. Isami Kodaka
6. Alex Colon
7. Toxin
8. Yoshinari Ogawa
9. Demonio Infernal
10. Big Ovett
11. Toru Sugiura
12. Nick Gage
13. Daisuke Harada
14. Eric Ryan
15. Go Shiozaki
16. Yuko Miyamoto
17. Romano Garcia
18. Tony Deppen
19. Arez
20. Rina Yamashita
21. Ricky Marvin
22. Villano III Jr.
23. Matt Tremont
24. El Hijo de Canis Lupus
25. Dragon Bane
26. John Wayne Murdoch
27. Big Chico Che
28. Fred Yehi
29. Fuminori Abe
30. Pagano
31. Kazushi Sakuraba
32. Kazuyuki Fujita
33. Chris Dickinson
34. Laredo Kid
35. Yoshiko
36. Fresero Jr.
37. Takashi Sasaki
38. AJ Gray
39. Katsuhiko Nakajima
40. Demus
41. LA Park
42. Mance Warner
43. Fly Star
44. Matthew Justice
45. Minoru Fujita
46. Eddie Kingston
47. GENTARO
48. Yuki Ishikawa
49. Daisuke Ikeda
50. Takuya Nomura

Alright, let's break things down

No WWE/AEW/NJPW?: Last year I made the choice to hardly include any wrestlers representing the three biggest promotions in the world. The only exception is Eddie Kingston, who worked half the year on the indies before finally being signed by AEW. Even then, Kingston only made it to #46 on my list.

Part of this was strategic voting. Because of the 50-wrestler limitation of last year's list, I wanted to highlight more workers that might not be on anybody else's ballot. I thought it was way more important to represent my 2020 wrestling watching giving shine to workers like Ovett, Rina Yamashita and Isami Kodaka than having big names on there.

However, a major part of it is simply a ran hot and cold on a lot of those big promotions in the Covid era. The only NJPW wrestlers who would've even stood a chance at making my list last year were Testuya Naito, Zack Sabre Jr., EVIL and maaaaaybe El Desperado. The promotion simply didn't do much for me in 2020, even when my favorite wrestlers in the promotion were working.

WWE is the same way. Sasha Banks, Asuka, Daniel Bryan and Drew Gulak had very good years, but nothing that I felt too strongly about comparing to other years in their careers. They shined brightly on 2020 WWE television, but that wasn't hard to do as a lot of WWE Covid television felt like throwing shit at the wall and seeing what stuck. Shining there was a low bar to clear.

AEW was probably the most up-and-down promotion out of any of them. I liked their weekly TV on average more than WWE's, but they would seemingly go months without anything that truly interested me. Eddie Kingston really was one of the sole bright spots for me. If I'm being honest, I enjoyed AEW Dark's wild three-hour shows of squash matches more than Dynamite. So if I had more AEW representation last year, it would've likely been from people like the Chaos Project and The Acclaimed more than the Sammy Guevaras and Britt Bakers of the world. However, I think Darby Allin probably should've snuck onto the list because he had at least as good of a year as Kingston.

Contrast that to 2021, where all three companies are likely going to be represented a lot more strongly in my Top 100. AEW will likely benefit the most with Kingston, Allin, CM Punk, Miro, Serena Deeb, Sting, and many others with very strong cases for the top quarter of my list. I've watched even less WWE TV in 2021 than I watched in 2020, but I think I still have to make room for WALTER and Ilja Dragunov considering their outputs. Bryan Danielson will make a very good case when considering both his AEW and WWE work. While I'm still very low on modern New Japan, there are bright spots - Naito before he got hurt, Zack Sabre Jr., Great-O-Khan, El Desperado, YOSHI-HASHI, likely some others I'm forgetting.

So if I made my 2020 list again, would I represent these companies more? Maybe. I can see myself putting Darby in the top 25, putting Kingston higher than he is, and maybe finding places for Asuka, Bryan and Naito. But I'm not so high on any of their years that it would change that much if anything on my list.

Who'd I Overrate? Looking at this list, I think there are a few workers that I overrated a bit. I gave Nick Gage the #12 spot because for a good chunk of the year before he got hurt, he was having a lot of good matches. At one point he was probably my #1 worker of the year. Looking back, I don't think his 2020 output was that special. He had some good matches, but a much more limited Nick Gage has had better matches on slightly fewer bookings. I really liked his matches with Matthew Justice and Rickey Shane Page last year, but they don't touch his matches with RSP, Sadika or Matt Cardona from this year. I think with so few people having great years in 2020 because of Covid I used it as an excuse to give Gage a kind of consolation prize for working hard before he got hurt. Honestly there's no reason for him to be ranked above someone like a John Wayne Murdoch for 2020.

I also don't even know how Takashi Sasaki got on my list, much less at #37. FREEDOMS was one of the better promotions of 2020 so it makes sense that I would have seen a lot of Sasaki, but when I look back on the year for the promotion I'm not thinking "oh boy Takashi Sasaki was great" at all.

I also like Pagano a lot, but I don't think he'd make top 30 for me anymore. His feud with Chessman was great, especially the main event at Triplemania, but I think I'm really overrating his performances there, especially because I didn't even find a spot on my list for Chessman as well (he'd likely just crack the top 50 if I made another list).

While I love Toxin and Demonio Infernal and they're both probably top 25, I don't know if I'd keep them in the top 10.

Who'd I Underrate? Since I just talked about possibly overrating Toxin and Demonio Infernal, I think #19 is waaaaay too low for Arez. He's a guy that always looks fantastic, and really should have been my #3 lucha representative after Fishman and Wotan.

Kazushi Sakuraba and Kazuyuki Fujita also should've been higher. They didn't work the most dates, but they almost always delivered. Neither of them making my top 30 seems crazy looking back. If I made room for Yuko Miyamoto (who did have a pretty damn good year) in my top 20, I don't see why I'd leave Sakuraba and Fujita out there.

The late Big Ovett made my top 10 for his work both on hardcore lucha shows and as part of Los Strippers Big, one of the best tag teams in the world for 2020. His work as a singles star definitely puts him above his teammates, but I don't think Big Chico Che should have been that far behind him in my rankings as Chico Che was just as likely to be the star in a Los Strippers Big Tag as Ovett.

That all being said, I still stand by most of this list. I'd do some slight placement adjustment and have some hard internal arguments with myself of who to cut if I did want to find a place for Darby or Chessman, but for the most part I like what I had here. I'm not gonna do a full re-rank, but here's what my updated Top 10 would likely look like:

1. Kaito Kiyomiya
2. Masashi Takeda
3. El Hijo de Fishman
4. Wotan
5. Isami Kodaka
6. Arez
7. Yoshinari Ogawa
8. Daisuke Harada
9. Big Ovett
10. Alex Colon

So a few shake-ups after the top 5, but nobody who wasn't already in my initial top 20.