Like most internet dwelling wrestling fans, my two current favourite wrestlers are Daniel Bryan and Shinsuke Nakamura. If we're talking soft spot love however, Tomohiro Ishii runs away with that particularly coveted accolade. Ishii recently turned 40, and is billed as standing at 5 ft 7 in, but this could be an overestimation. For years he was the underrated guy in the big CHAOS stable, taking pinfalls in tag matches so Okada or Nakamura could stay strong. Something changed over the last few years however, and Ishii has become one of the finest performers in the entire company. One of the keys to Ishii's rise to prominence is that style of his matches. NJPW is a world of professional wrestling excellence, yet Ishii's matches always stand out. Why? Well, because they are the closest thing to a genuine fight that you will find in pro wrestling today. You won't find much in the way of collar and elbow tie ups, rest holds and anything resembling a feeling out process here. More often than not the matches start at 100mph, Ishii and whoever he up against simply hitting each other as hard as possible until the other one can't get up. At times uncomfortable to watch, it nonetheless adds an intensity and sense of the real that is often missing in professional wrestling. It certainly won't be everybody's cup of tea, but it most certainly is my cup of coffee and then some.
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.