Rants

Japanese Wrestling

By Scott Keith on February 24, 2013

Regular reader on the blog

Was wondering your thoughts on Japanese Pro Wrestling. You rarely speak about Puro(aside from the occasional Tanahashi match) More specifically I was wondering your thoughts on Japanese Wrestling in the 1990's. Were you a fan? Did you like AJPW or NJPW better? Or do you think it's overrated?

Also where would you rank some of the top Japanese stars(Misawa, Kobashi, Kawada, Jumbo, Liger, etc.) in terms of the Greatest Wrestlers ever? I'm not asking a numbered list or anything too crazy, just wondering your opinions on them.

Thanks for (hopefully) answering my question, looking forward to hearing your response on the blog.
My interest in Japan in the 90s was a pretty narrow subset consisting of New Japan Juniors and Michinoku Pro. I was never a big fan of the AJPW "strong style" stuff, which was generally characterized as guys taking a piledriver and then seemingly hitting three clotheslines before selling the original move like death. I respect the artform, it just wasn't my bag. That being said, I've seen tons of Misawa-Kawada-Kobashi combinations and I've loved 99% of them as individual matches. Not to mention that the style pretty heavily influenced the current WWE "trading a million finishers" style that has permeated the main event for years now. And of course Muta and Liger are pretty high up on my all-time favorites list.

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