I say 'North American', because the man many see as the future of professional wrestling happens to fight out of our very own Kent. I'm talking of course about Zack Sabre Jr., the performer who has taken the world of pro graps by storm and forged himself something of a niche as Daniel Bryan's spiritual successor in the process. Still only 28 years old, Zack is an 11 year veteran and arguably the finest technical wrestler on the planet today, a point that the readers of the Wrestling Observer Newsletter agree with as he was voted the Best Technical Wrestler for the last two years. He is all about the strong style, hitting his opponents as hard as humanly possible before stretching their limbs into positions that make the viewer wince, let alone the foe. Sabre Jr. is coming off a number of years where his momentum can only really be described as akin to that of a runaway train. He was the winner of the 2015 Battle of Los Angeles in Pro Wrestling Guerilla, putting on great match after great match on his way to winning the final triple threat against Chris Hero and Mike Bailey. Poetically, his best known match happens to be against the man whose shoes he will eventually fill. In 2008, Zack Sabre Jr. and Daniel Bryan (then Bryan Danielson) went at it in Triple X Wrestling, a Coventry-baed promotion. In many ways it was the match that put Zack on the map, a technical masterpiece that was all strikes and stretches, with the veteran Danielson taking Sabre Jr. to school for the most part, before Zack began his heroic comeback. Highlights of that match can be found below. As Zack Sabre Jr.'s stock continues to rise in professional wrestling, it is only a matter of time before he arrives in WWE. Then the WWE Universe will have another plucky underdog on its hands, albeit an underdog who just so happens to be a better pure wrestler than the majority of his foes. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yxeSWJpRszQ
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.
