As I was getting into pro wrestling while the sun was setting on New Japan’s golden age and AEW was in its infancy, one wrestler in particular really stood out to me: Zack Sabre Jr.
I grew up in a wrestling landscape that was essentially a WWE monopoly in the US, and I had no idea that other styles of wrestling existed beyond the vague concept of lucha libre and occasional mentions of this “New Japan” thing. My only exposure to wrestling came from a relative trying to get me to watch Raw, and I found the presentation to be obnoxious and thought wrestling matches had to be dull affairs consisting of sitting in holds with wrestlers who looked like they were grown in a lab.
While wrestlers like Kenny Omega, the Young Bucks, and Will Ospreay grabbed my attention with their spectacular athleticism, Zack Sabre Jr. was humbly clad in very plain tights and looked very much like a classical image of a sportsman. He also worked a completely unique style compared to his contemporaries; while other wrestlers I was watching were doing innovative high flying, having hard-hitting wars, or having main event epics in the case of guys like Okada and Naito, Zack worked a much more grounded style that fit more with the vision in my head of what pro wrestling would be like if it were a shoot sport.
While I started to get into wrestling under the assumption that grappling and holds were slow and dull, Zack worked at a pace as fast as any of the other elite workers in the world and would have so many creative holds that he never sat in that I found myself as thrilled by his matches as I was by the blowaway athleticism. Year after year, Zack will not stop showing up in my top lists for wrestler of the year and matches of the year, even as some of the other wrestlers of his era have had a down year or have fallen off completely over time. After going back and watching Zack’s earlier work, he has been nothing but consistently excellent and a top-tier worker for well over a decade, and even his earlier stuff is worthwhile. He’s managed to do this while working a style that no other wrestler in history has been able to reach the same highs and have the same match catalog with as he has, especially in an era where wrestling styles have gradually become more homogenized. Because of this, Zack Sabre Jr. stands out for his incredible body of work even amongst an era where we’ve seen a lot of all-time great in-ring workers, and I think for this he deserves to be voted into the Wrestling Observer Hall of Fame.
I won’t beat around the bush: there’s no real argument I can make for Zack Sabre Jr. as a draw.
You could look at some nice houses he did in the UK, and you could argue his match against Bryan Danielson at the inaugural WrestleDream was the marquee match of that show, but at the end of the day, Zack Sabre Jr.’s drawing ability will be defined by his time as IWGP World Heavyweight Champion. His two reigns have seen a drop in Wrestle Kingdom attendance and a G1 Climax tour that had some nights perform worse in the same towns than the times New Japan ran them for a G1 Climax in 2021, with attendance restrictions due to COVID-19.
As far as historical significance and influence goes, it’s too soon to say. Zack is still in the middle of his career, but there are several currently active wrestlers in the WON HOF who had historical significance at the time they were on the ballot. Only time will tell if Zack’s wrestling style will influence future generations, but the early returns don’t look promising, as some wrestlers from his generation are already having their styles emulated by younger wrestlers today, especially when it comes to people copying Will Ospreay.
While these things hurt Zack Sabre Jr.’s case for being inducted into the Hall of Fame, he is one of the greatest in-ring workers of all-time and is a truly one of a kind wrestler.
ZSJ revived a style that was all but dead and not only adapted it to fit in the context of modern match structures. I think high-level technical wrestling lands with me more than some wrestling fans who can’t stand it, but I am far from a grapple pervert. Technical wrestling is extremely hit or miss, and often misses more times than not. I think some corners of wrestling fandom tend to overrate technical wrestling in an effort to come across like they have more sophisticated taste in wrestling because grappling comes across as more “realistic” than someone doing a Hurricanrana. However, this often winds up turning into matches where wrestlers fart around on the mat or one wrestler very slowly working holds over their opponent.
If you go back and watch the best of World of Sport, it’s very fast-paced, athletic, and flashy while still feeling grounded. For some reason, a lot of technical wrestling seemed to lose sight of that and became slow and self-indulgent. Zack Sabre Jr. took all the right lessons from the best of World of Sport, like Johnny Saint and Adrian Street, and you especially see a ton of Saint in his mannerisms. He grapples at a breakneck pace and manages to make his movements and mannerisms dynamic.
Not only did he revive this lost style, but he managed to innovate upon it. If you watch New Japan with English commentary, you’ll notice the commentary team puts over the fact that Zack never sits in the same hold for more than five seconds in order to always keep his opponent from having time to figure out how to get out of it. This is not only a great kayfabe reason, but a brilliant way to keep his matches exciting from a quality standpoint. You’re never going to see Zack in a rest hold or sit in the same hold for an extended period of time unless it’s the closing stretch of a match and Zack has his opponent twisted into a pretzel and you’re on the edge of your seat trying to figure out if his opponent will submit or manage to withstand and weasel his way out of it. I think the peak of these segments in a ZSJ match for me comes from what is almost a guaranteed lock for match of the year in 2025: Zack Sabre Jr. vs. Hiroki Goto from New Japan’s New Beginning in Osaka, where Goto miraculously won the title.
Zack is always inventing new and unique holds, and in this match, Zack has all four of Goto’s limbs completely captured in some wacky submission near the center of the ring. There’s seemingly no way Goto can escape; it’s not a hold he can throw his momentum around to get out of Zack’s grip like more traditional wrestling holds, and he’s nowhere near the ropes. Goto manages to slowly fling his body towards the ropes and withstand the hold for an extended period of time, and somehow manages to get to the ropes. The tension and emotion both I and the Osaka crowd shouting Goto’s name felt in that match was one of the rare times pro wrestling has managed to move me emotionally, and that was a moment I’ll never forget.
That match was as much of a masterful performance by Zack as it was Goto’s shining moment. No other wrestler on the planet has submissions as convoluted and nasty-looking as Zack, but he also transitions into them smoothly and seamlessly.
When wrestlers try to get ambitious with submissions, they can fall into the trap of forcing them when they don’t have the best grip or full cooperation of the opponent (particularly in lucha), and it can look awkward and break the suspension of disbelief. This has never been an issue with Zack. Speaking of cooperation, his arsenal always looks organic, believable, and never looks cooperative despite being complex.
Zack’s matches will make you grit your teeth because some of his offense looks so uncomfortable. I wince every time he does that twisting neckbreaker with his legs, and he’s hit some of the most painful-looking Dragon Screws I’ve ever seen, even with as ubiquitous of a move it is in Japan. In addition to his technical prowess, Zack has evolved his wrestling style over the years. A criticism I’ve heard of his work from the 2010s is that he was too focused on applying as many flashy holds as possible. As time went on, his match structure matured to where those came as part of the finishing stretches, and the level of hold complexity was built up to until you wound up with something like what was described in the Goto match. As New Japan began to push Zack more as a legitimate heavyweight, he leaned more into striking with stiff forearms and slaps, plus his own version of a Michinoku Driver that provided him with a convincing pinfall finisher instead of only relying on submission finishes.
Zack’s style and match structure make him seem like a wrestler who would only have great matches when working on top, but the brilliance of Zack Sabre Jr. is that his character is arrogant and cocky. When he wrestles power guys like Tomohiro Ishii or Shingo Takagi, his fatal flaw is that he gets goaded into going into striking battles with them, and that often ends up costing him the match. Even after gaining size and incorporating power moves into his moveset in recent years, he’s still presented as not being on the same level as the other heavyweights he competes with in New Japan. This keeps him from eating other wrestlers up and from his matches feeling formulaic. Zack also has a long history of working with a diverse range of opponents. A lot of times, high flyers and ground-based wrestlers can be an oil and water matchup and can lead to awkward chemistry, but Zack has always turned this into a really exciting matchup style where each opponent will see who can outlast the other, where Zack will have incredible counters into holds while wrestlers are in midair. Even when wrestling other technical wrestlers, Zack is able to make the ones I find to be ordinarily dry work at his pace, and he’s able to work with different types of technical wrestlers. Llave is a wildly different beat than Zack’s World of Sport style, but Zack managed to have an acclaimed series of matches with Hechicero, including one in Arena Coliseo where he fit seamlessly into a traditional lucha two out of three falls structure in a singles match, which I would argue is the hardest style of wrestling to adapt to if you don’t come from a lucha background or aren’t a high flyer.
Besides his ability to work with opponents with all kinds of diverse styles, Zack has had a great match in just about every promotion on the planet across all sorts of countries and four of the seven continents. Only a few other wrestlers across the history of the business can claim that feat. Zack is one of the best wrestlers I’ve ever seen when it comes to carrying mediocre or even bad wrestlers to passable or even good matches. I loathe Ren Narita and think there’s nothing in that guy, but all his best matches have been with ZSJ and are amongst the least offensive and off-putting House of Torture matches out there. There is a baseline level of quality you can expect from a Zack Sabre Jr. match that has a higher floor than even some other all-time greats.
The elephant in the room when it comes to Zack’s level of quality is the main event of this year’s Wrestle Kingdom, where he faced Shota Umino in a divisive, underwhelming match by the standards of Wrestle Kingdom main events. You’d have to go back to the main event of the original Wrestle Kingdom, where a washed-up Keiji Muto and Masahiro Chono took on Satoshi Kojima and Hiroyoshi Tenzan to find a more panned Wrestle Kingdom main event. Normally, I am not in favor of playing what-ifs or blaming one opponent for a disappointing match when it comes to wrestling, especially when we’re talking about the Observer Hall of Fame, but can we just blame Shota Umino? That guy literally looked like he didn’t want to be there, and I think Zack would have had a better match wrestling DDT’s Yoshihiko, who also has more charisma than Umino. Zack tried his damndest to have a match structure worthy of the main event of a Tokyo Dome show, and I thought his individual performance was terrific, but Umino just would not cooperate. Zack then went on to have a great match against Ricochet the next night in the same main event spot at Wrestle Dynasty despite having to follow the Kenny Omega vs. Gabe Kidd match that will probably be a lot of people’s match of the year for 2025 and also showed he’s not a choke artist when it comes to Dome main events. He also had what will be another match of the year contender for 2025 with the aforementioned Hiroki Goto match, so maybe we can give Zack a mulligan for Wrestle Kingdom. He certainly has the resume to back it up.
Wrestling Observer Hall of Fame voters tend to get cold feet when it comes to voting in workrate candidates, but when it comes to drawing candidates, it’s a slam dunk.
To some extent, I get it. Drawing records are tangible data, while work can be subjective and divisive. However, in theory, voters are supposed to hold the three categories of drawing ability, in-ring work, and historical significance on equal footing, and a candidate is supposed to have an argument in all three categories, or in the case of someone like Zack, they must be so outstanding in one category that it warrants their entry into the Hall of Fame. When it comes to middling workers, we don’t think twice about voting them in for their drawing record, but someone like Tomohiro Ishii was a controversial candidate. I am hopeful that Ishii’s induction hopefully has broken a glass ceiling when it comes to pure workrate candidates. If you’re not convinced that Zack belongs in the same conversation as a worker as Tomohiro Ishii, he has the accolades to back him up. I talked about my belief that having 20+ matches rated nine or above on Cagematch puts you in the conversation for being an all-time great worker in my previous column about Will Ospreay.
Zack has 29 matches rated nine or higher, tied with Shingo Takagi and putting him only slightly behind Kota Ibushi, Mitsuharu Misawa, and the aforementioned Tomohiro Ishii. Zack’s two recent matches from 2023 and 2024 against Bryan Danielson are both in Cagematch’s top 100 matches of all-time list, with the 2024 match ranking number 30 overall, and both matches are doing very well in various match of the year polls. Since it is the Wrestling Observer Newsletter Hall of Fame, I think Dave Meltzer’s ratings are worth merit, and Zack has 11 matches rated 5 stars or higher by Dave. Even though Dave’s award for best technical wrestler is named after Bryan Danielson, for a while, it was known as the Zack Sabre Jr. Award, with Zack winning every year from 2014 to 2020 and also winning again in 2024. Zack also won Technical Wrestler of the Decade for the 2010s as well as Japan MVP for 2024, although your mileage may vary on how much stock you put in the latter given the state of the puro scene. While Zack is part of the Japan category on the ballot, I believe that regional sorting is intended to best represent where a wrestler has been the most prolific throughout their career, and to keep voting balanced; their work in other regions is perfectly valid to use in their case.
I cannot stress this enough: Zack Sabre Jr. has managed to become one of the greatest wrestlers of all time through working a style that almost no one else has, and absolutely no one else has ever worked, reaching the same heights that Zack has, past and present. While you may argue that Bryan Danielson is the greatest technical wrestler of all time, Danielson has a variety of matches that work a myriad of different wrestling styles. With Zack, he’s always going to be grappling. I don’t see this as a pro or a con for either man as an overall wrestler. I don’t need Zack doing topés, and I think that would make him less special. If I am deciding who the best technical wrestler of all-time is, I have to go with the wrestler who is committed to that niche. I also think Zack is a slightly more interesting and dynamic grappler than Danielson, which again is no slight against Danielson.
If we’re building a boutique hall of fame for the greatest wrestlers of all-time, I believe that the greatest technical wrestler of all-time needs to be included ,and one of the greatest bell-to-bell performers of all-time needs to be included.
If I were to make a list of the greatest in-ring workers of all-time, Zack would be a lock for my top 25, and I’d strongly consider him for my top 10.
If not Zack, then who else has as strong an in-ring case for belonging in the Wrestling Observer Hall of Fame?
