10 Best Wrestling Gimmick Changes Of 2016

4. SANADA

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NJPW

What's that quote again? 'Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me'? Yeah, that's the one. Well, just a couple of years after humiliating and embarrassing then-future and current-New Japan Ace Kazuchika Okada, TNA may well have let another future Ace slip through their fingertips.

Sanada was a one-time X-Division Champion in TNA, but he is mostly remembered for turning on The Great Muta and joining up with James Storm's stable 'Sh*tstorm'. Oh wait, no, sorry, 'The Revolution'. Sanada was wasted in indoctrinations and cult-rubbish, and when he left TNA in April 2015 nobody was really that bothered.

Fast forward to 2016 and SANADA (now stylised in all caps) finds himself in an alternative stable once more, but holy moly has the perception of him changed. SANADA is quite clearly a can't-miss future main event performer for New Japan Pro Wrestling, and I dare say the inevitable SANADA vs. Tetsuya Naito match will be one of the best we see in 2017.

SANADA's move to quiet cold machine has opened a lot of eyes to his potential. Remember his name folks.

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Born in the middle of Wales in the middle of the 1980's, John can't quite remember when he started watching wrestling but he has a terrible feeling that Dino Bravo was involved. Now living in Prague, John spends most of his time trying to work out how Tomohiro Ishii still stands upright. His favourite wrestler of all time is Dean Malenko, but really it is Repo Man. He is the author of 'An Illustrated History of Slavic Misery', the best book about the Slavic people that you haven't yet read. You can get that and others from www.poshlostbooks.com.