Who do you think is the GOAT of Yo-Yoing?! (any/all styles)

General Yo-Yo
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Saw Evan Nagao post this on the BST and thought what you guys would select on here as well! :slight_smile:

In no order of importance/favs/goats/imo

1A: Jensen, Yuuki, Ando, Mickey, Gentry, Evan, Takeshi Matsuura, Jason Lee, Charles Haycock, Tyler V., Nate Sutter, Paul Escolar, Spencer Berry, Brent D, JD Steel, Grant J, Bryan Fig, Guy Wright, Tyler Sev, MarkMont, Christopher Chia, Zach Gormley, Andrew Bergan, Janos K, Shinnosuke Miyamoto, Takahiro Izuka, Zichen Liu (jason), Matt Poon, Alex Loziniak, Jon Bot, Abe DaGravedigga, JT Nickel, Ed Hopnik, Drew Tetz, Issac Samms, Sebby Brock, and Paul Han.

These players are THE most innovative/dopest creators of tricks/variations/doing well at contest (LOL) I have ever seen.

And I am sure I am missing a bunch, just what comes to mind right at the moment LOL!…and that’s just 1A…

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For competiton 1a i dont think anyone can come close to Mickey. 3 world contest 1sts in a row? Yeesh.

After that, it really depends on whos style you enjoy the most. Id say most of the people on that list have a very strong style that they stick to and that a lot of people try to emulate.

Out of the list, id probably say guy wright and jason lee.

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Comp people: All the world champs obviously. Mickey, Gentry, Evan, Jensen, and John Ando especially IMO.
Outside of that, Chris Chia, Colon Beckford, Sebastian Brock, Paul Han.
I think Connor Seals will be on the list soon.
Tech people: Janos and Zach (world champs too). I see Dario Krakowski becoming a legend in the future.

I’d say the one player who’s done the most for yoyoing is Gentry, without a doubt.

Edit: In X divisions, Shinji and Shu in 2a. Hajime, Alex, and Hank in 3a. Rei, Tsubasa, and Ben Conde in 4A (Hajime too I guess, but he’s only done it twice. Takeshi and Tyler in 5A.

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5A: JonRob, Tyler Severance, Takeshi, John Wolfe

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1A: Mickey
2A: Shinji
3A: Hajime
4A: Rei… for now
5A: Takeshi

Overall it’s Hajime EZ clap. We are currently witnessing history

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I feel like Connor seals keeps getting better and better. Definitely someone who’s going to make history. I mean he already got 2nd at nats

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John Wolfe is awesome

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I’d say it’s easy to say Takeshi is the 5A goat for someone who wasn’t around during the peak of 5A innovation just looking at contest results, but players like JonRob, Tyler, Samm Scott, Miggy, Jeff Coons etc… we’re doing a lot of creative, amazing stuff that looked different from the much more homogeneous stuff we see now that is imo largely the Japanese influence. People had distinct styles and would come up with stuff none of the other players even thought of.

John Wolfe still seems like he has a lot of that American 5A influence.

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Daisuke Shimada laid the groundwork for 3a and was the clear pioneer at the time. I’d say Hank Freeman is the founder of modern 3a. He was the guy that made 3a good. 3a trick and freestyle structure of almost every player derives back to him. So I guess you could argue either as the GOAT of 3a. Honestly I think he’s been more impactful to the 3a scene and meta than Hajime has but I list him at the top because of the overall dominance that he has that’s even greater than Hank.

Hank developed a formula and trick structure that allowed him to dominate the scene. While he did have some innovation from year to year he was mainly improving his formula each year. Most players still follow this structure, it’s literally still the meta to this day.

Hajime is so good that he doesn’t need a formula, he can do something different every contest and still come out on top. He doesn’t just have a balanced mastery of the trick types within the style like Hank, he is creating AND mastering new grounds regularly, and I think this is just the start. We had a sneak peek of new trick types in his worlds FS. It’s crazy but you can tell they can still be improved upon. In one or two years we might be seeing something I wasn’t expecting to see for another 5-10 years.

I don’t follow 5a as much as 1a or 3a but Id say Takeshi was in a similar situation

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Jonrob was the goat

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Takeshi wasn’t necessarily innovating as much as he was “perfecting” a format that does well at contests. But there’s a lot of cool stuff American players were doing that wouldn’t score well at all anymore.

JonRob did decently at contests and he definitely wouldn’t now.

Edit: and this isn’t saying I don’t enjoy watching modern 5a routines, they’ all just a lot more similar than they used to be.

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GOAT stands for Greatest Of All Time, right? That means we’re looking for just a single individual who is the greatest yoyoer of all time, i.e., throughout the entire history of yoyoing (that we have documented material for).

So if you had to pick just one person, regardless of style or era, who would it be? It is too easy to pick a long list of favorites for each style, but that isn’t as challenging as coming up with a GOAT.

Try again folks. (<— except those of you who gave just a single name)

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GOAT might still be Mickey too tbh.

Yeah he “only” won 4 world titles in the most competitive decision including a 3 peat but he also got 2nd like 5 times consecutively and finals like 15+?

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I think it would be hard to argue against Mickey, objectively. The competition for number two is too close to call, though

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I’m with @zslane here. If the conversation is about “the GOAT”, you can’t list multiple people. Especially if they all play the same style/division. Plus, we could all list more or less the same group of people and then all be more or less accurate. But that’s not very interesting.

I’m far more interested in hearing someone’s justification for why they see a particular player as the GOAT. That is the fun part of this kind of conversation.

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I’m not sure if he’s been mentioned before, but Polo Garbkomol is on another level

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Forgot to mention him. He’s one of my favs. I think he’s a candidate for next world champ.

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raises his eyebrow

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I think the list is missing some guy named Koloski…

Hope you are well, my friend!

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What about 0a? I vote @edhaponik Ed Haponik the Fixed God. Tho @EOS44 is currently giving him a run for his money, Ed has him on sheer length of career and depth of contribution.

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