20 Absolute Best Wrestlers In The World Right Now

New Japan's 'Stone Pitbull' is coming off another low key Wrestler of the Year run rife with critically acclaimed bouts, outdoing more celebrated workers like Kazuchika Okada, Tetsuya Naito, and Hiroshi Tanahashi. That's Ishii in a nutshell, though. Low key. He wasn't born to play headliner and it's unlikely that he ever well - which is fine. Wrestling's best brawler has always worked better as an overmatched fighting spirit guy anyway.

Ishii's strengths are the same as they've always been: world-class selling, gruff stoicism, stiffness, coming across like the hardest bastard alive, and the ability to draw a crowd into his struggle. That point is key. Nobody makes you feel each blow quite like Big Tommy, whose every wince, grunt, groan, and pained roar connect through expert emoting. When he sells a worked limb as if it's about to fall off, your limb starts hurting. That's his power.

This skillset makes Ishii such an easy guy to get behind and adds impossible levels of drama to his already dramatic ringwork. On top of this, he's living proof that a wrestler needs only master four or five moves if they can nail what happens between them, which has always been more important anyway.