10 Best Wrestlers Of 2019
8. Shingo Takagi
If literally any other wrestler cosplayed as a dragon, they would look ridiculous. It's such a worn symbol of power, tied to such lofty mythology, that it would look pitifully aspirational.
Shingo Takagi is a dragon.
The way in which he generates momentum from his rope runs is such that he, not every WWE performer with a vaguely supernatural-leaning gimmick, is worthy of the next Undertaker tag. But he connects with his Pumping Bomber lariat with even more ungodly force than the invading, hard-nut foreign menaces of old. Shingo in 2019 worked a superb programme with SHO in which he scaled back that power to a level that was just believable enough to resonate as a fantastic bully versus puke BOSJ match. Shingo starred as an unkillable force throughout that same tournament before falling to Will Ospreay in a sensational, top-tier MOTY candidate. He almost stole the G1, too, in a phenomenal monster mash with Tomohiro Ishii.
Hirooki Goto has lived long enough to become "boring", sadly, but he looked anything but in a ripper of a G1 clash with Shingo, which was all the more impressive, given it was a dead rubber.
Shingo was so good in 2019 that he raised the fading Tetsuya Naito to the MOTY sphere in the Ingobernable's best performance of the year.