I see he'll be teaming in the RWTL with Suzuki and I'm psyched. He's had good matches with the weirdest guys, like Rene Dupree and Viscera, and I just really dig him working like a 1970s Mid-Atlantic face. His cage match with Suzuki was awesome, especially when he pimp slapped Suzuki to death. Haven't checked out his matches with turds like Suwama, but I wouldn't be shocked if those had me thinking about him as the best guy in Japan.

He seems like a guy who hasn't fully grasped/forgotten how to work pro style. At times, he forgets to sell or sells as if he were in a shoot style match, and a lot of his transitions are weak. He's also a guy who uses quite a few submissions, which is not ideal since most of the main event slugs in All Japan love falling asleep whenever they're on the mat.

I watched the second half of the CC Finals (youtube deleted the first half) and thought it was really uninspired. His match against Mutoh was awful, as well, although at this point it's pretty much impossible to get anything watchable out of Mutoh.

Funaki/Malenko matwork was excellent and that might be enough to get him on my list. I'll try to check out his work against the US guys before the deadline. Has anyone here seen the Suwama match?

The Suwama match sucked, but the random matches against former WWE guys are definitely worth checking out.