Opinion
Top 5: Japanese Wrestlers Outside of New Japan
With all the excitement resonating around New Japan and Wrestle Kingdom 12, I figured it would be unfair to act like there’s only one company in Japan. No one likes it when WWE gets preferential treatment just because it’s the biggest dog in the fight, so we shouldn’t ignore the talent in the smaller promotions just because New Japan is the new sexy and cool thing.
Hopefully most of these guys you are learning about for the first time, and take the time to click the links to their match in this article. Let’s spread the love for puroresu further than Kenny Omega, Testuya Naito, and Kazuchika Okada.
5. Shotaro Ashino (Wrestle-1)
Easily the hardest section to fill out since there’s a lot of tremendous top talent through most of the promotions. But Great Muta’s Wrestle-1 organization claims this one with their current champion who hasn’t even been wrestling professionally for 3 years yet. Growing into a solid heel, he is a ground specialist. Most of his offense is technical submissions or Greco Roman suplexes and clutches. He’s had quite a few good defenses this year, but the main reason he grabbed the number 5 spot is his lack of experience, yet amazing aptitude. Even an injury last year, that sidelined him for 3 months didn’t slow down his meteoric ascent in the company. Such a prodigious story deserves the recognition of Top 5. Check out this match between him and Jiro Kuroshio, Jiro is very charismatic and entertaining, but the match quality hits all of the marks.
4. Shingo Takagi (Dragon Gate)
A former bodybuilder who trained under Animal Hamaguchi (same guy who train EVIL in NJPW). He is a four time Open the Dream Gate champion in Dragon Gate (the World Title basically), former Open the Twin Gate champion with WWE Superstar Akira Tozawa, as well as the 2005 Wrestling Observer Rookie of the Year. Even though 2017 was a fairly quiet year for him all things considered, he’s one of the best wrestlers in Japan at expressing the story and psychology in the ring without needing to understand the language. His brawling/power style is brutal, but his expressive mannerisms is what helps you connect to the match. Watch this match from last year again Jimmy Susumu.
3. Naomichi Marufuji (Noah)
He has been called Noah’s Genius and even Misawa’s Successor. The star student of Misawa and one of the cornerstones of Noah since it’s inception. Marufuji has won all of the GHC belts, seen success in NJPW’s junior division during their cooperative years, and even beat Okada in G1 24 which created a rematch later in the year at King of Pro Wrestling 2016. He’s innovated different variations of Misawa’s flowsion and even innovated the Shiranui (Sliced Bread).He’s been around for nearly 20 years, but he’s not even 40, and hasn’t really lost a step. Here’s his match from the 2009 Super J Cup vs Jushin “Thunder” Liger (and we all know Liger is the best Junior in the history of wrestling).
2. Kento Miyahara (AJPW)
The Ace of All Japan, and the only one from their younger crop of talent to not leave when the company fell on hard times a few years ago. He’s like a combination of Kazuchika Okada and Kenny Omega. He uses a V-Trigger style knee strike he calls Blackout and a bevy of suplex holds that lead to many of his victories. He had some great matches this year with Shuji Ishikawa, Suwama and Joe Doering. Since dropping the title to Doering he’s taken a small backseat to allow for the main event scene to expand a little, but being the Ace, he won’t be out of the title picture for long. See his match against Suwama from last year for a small taste.
Honorable Mentions:
Shuji Ishikawa (AJPW)
An accomplished singles and tag competitor. Former AJPW Triple Crown champion (their World TItle), winner of the 2017 Champion’s Carnival and 2017 winner of the World’s Strongest Tag League with his partner Suwama. A veteran of the ring, but still puts on a fantastic match. His hard hitting style easily grounds younger, higher flying opponents, and his Fire/Thunder or Splash Mountain have won him quite a few battles. Not flashy, but he’ll break your face.
Daichi Hashimoto (BJW/AJPW)
AJPW World’s Strongest Tag League finalist with his partner Hideyoshi Kamitani, and current BJW World Strong Heavyweight Champion. He’s the son of Shinya Hashimoto (if you don’t know who that is, that’s fine, enjoy your 12th birthday party and puberty) and has been slowly living up to the name. Still young without a lot of exposure, but he could really be a bright spot for AJPW in the future if he continues to work with them.
1. Katsuhiko Nakajima (Noah)
The “Genius of the Kick” is the most complete wrestler from Noah’s younger talent. He’s had great battles against Go Shiozaki, Mohammad Yone, Brian Cage and Eddie Edwards this year. It would be hard to ignore the impact he’s had on this company since things started going downhill after the passing of Mitsuhara Misawa and the departure of KENTA (Hideo Itami). Similar to Miyahara, he utilizes a multitude of suplex variations to lead to victory, multiple kicks (hence, genius of the kick) and a Vertical Spike as some of his more effective offense. For a taste, here’s his Match of the Year Candidate against Brian Cage.
Now since I’ve shown that there’s a few companies, do yourself a favor, use Rutube.ru and find some more content from these promotions. The level of wrestling is equivalent to New Japan, just each company uses different concepts for lower card matches. Some like to use very old veterans (like Dory Funk Jr) or comedy wrestlers (like Stalker Ichikawa). You may not care for all of the undercard, but the upper mid card to main event stuff holds up nicely to what you’ve become accustomed to.
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Opinion
TheChairshot.com PRESENTS: WWE Bash In Berlin Immediate Reactions
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About Chairshot Radio Network
Launched in 2017, the Chairshot Radio Network presents you with the best in sports, entertainment, and sports entertainment. Wrestling and wrestling crossover podcasts + the most interesting content + the most engaging hosts = the most entertaining podcasts you’ll find!
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About Chairshot Radio Network
Launched in 2017, the Chairshot Radio Network presents you with the best in sports, entertainment, and sports entertainment. Wrestling and wrestling crossover podcasts + the most interesting content + the most engaging hosts = the most entertaining podcasts you’ll find!
MONDAY - Bandwagon Nerds (entertainment & popular culture)
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Attitude Of Aggression Podcast & The Big Five Project (chronologically exploring WWE's PPV/PLE history)
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Opinion
AJ’s Top 3 Favorite SummerSlams
AJ is back with his annual opinion article, and this time the SummerSlam buzz got him wondering about his personal Top 3.
It’s been a while since I have done any form of writing and SummerSlam is this Saturday. Of all the SummerSlams I’ve seen over the years; which ones are my favorites? While it’s not a revolutionary idea, I figured everyone loves to debate favorites of well, anything. Don’t worry though because this isn’t just going to be pure recency bias. I’ve watched the majority of them so with the ones I put on the list, it hit me more in some way shape or form whether it was story, a really good match or it just felt like a solid event.
At least this proves WWE is trending in a good direction for me, when it gets the ol’ brain juices flowing just because a show is around the corner!
#3: 2022 (Ol’ Brock Lesnar Has A Farm)
Starting off the show, we get Bianca looking for a rematch against Becky from last years SummerSlam and it was better than the 21 second affair that everyone claims was a squash. This time Bianca holds her own and beats the Man in a fairly decent match, good way to get the event started. Next up is the heat seeking missile, Logan Paul against the former heat seeking missile because, well he wasn’t cut out for it and wasn’t a guy in everyone’s eyes, The Miz. After they had their blow off at Mania with Logan coming out on top which… isn’t awful, I just don’t like Logan Paul because he has that dude bro aura and swagger to make him more hateable than any other person on the card. Which I suppose is his gimmick…so…kudos?
First Championship match is for the US Championship and it’s as expected that in Theory, he should never beat someone to the caliber of Bobby Lashley which is no surprise. Dominik and Rey still back when Dom wanted the good fight against the Judgement Day before joining them later. The former Colts players, which they hammered it dahn in this match up showed that the canal swimming, trash talkin’, podcastin’, current RAW Color Commentatin’ goofball we all love, Pat McAfee came out on top again Bum Ass Corbin.
Usos putting the Street Profits on lockdown in the penitentiary since I believe this was peak Bloodline with the belt collecting and running all of WWE. Liv beat Ronda Rousey which isn’t astonishing but it’s not something people had on their bingo cards for anything with WWE so it was a nice little shock factor. The most memorable part of the night is obviously the Main Event, Lesnar brings the tractor, Roman catching the Microphone and Brock stands on top of the vehicle. Damn good match that showed off what they do in the ring since Roman caught his stride as the main bad guy and Brock… liked people after all of this? That is still a weird statement in my head. Brock being a good guy people person. If Liv wasn’t on bingo cards for wrestling, that is not on bingo cards in any aspect of life really.
That is more of the event that had solid matches and story going for it. No weird double count out, multiple people involved, 5 tag matches on the card. Things made sense and weren’t convoluted, had shocking moments that were great to see like Liv actually getting a title defense and there were the results we all expected at the time like Theory losing in 4 minutes to Bobby Lashley.
#2: 2009 (Are You Ready for The Return?)
This event wasn’t that strong. It was strong with the star power involved in 2009 with guys like Rey Mysterio as Intercontinental Champion, Orton and Cena for the WWE Championship as it was becoming as stale as month old chips and CM Punk was facing Jeff Hardy before he ultimately returned to TNA at the beginning of 2010 after this PPV. For me, it’s not so much of the show itself, it was more of the memories because the Balai as our friends Chris Platt and Rey Cash like to call my brother and I, we were just coming back into wrestling and we were TNA Fans. We didn’t watch WWE that much really, it was just what came on after another channel had old ROH shows before they moved to three hours and swallowed the 8pm Eastern Slot. No, the reason why this has so many memories for me is three main reasons. First, Orton and Cena. They have had their rivalry since the beginning it seems, being each others foils like Hogan and Piper before them and there had to be a stipulation where if Randy was Counted Out or DQ’d, he’d lose the championship regardless. This was prime Viper Randy and the obvious joke we had of Super Cena where he very rarely lost, unless it was SummerSlam surprisingly enough.
Number two reason was CM Punk and Jeff Hardy. Hardys known for the Ladder and TLC matches in the past and this being the penultimate match for this feud and it was a banger of a match. If you didn’t know Punk before, it was a great introduction to his wrestling. I used to like Punk a lot because of this match because he could talk, wrestle… and not insanely personal with things in wrestling. In all seriousness, this was a great match. Ultimate risks, high reward for Punk grabbing the World Heavyweight Championship and he was given his next feud because of the final boss of SmackDown at that time. Thanks, Teddy Long.
The main and final reason though why this match gave me the memories flowing back is more of the fact that one of my closest and longest termed friends of 23 years, also loves wrestling. Back when we were younger, he’d do MoCap videos on YouTube with his figures. We’d have friends come over for parties at his house and we’d do the one thing WWE always told us not to do and that was try it at home. He was always stronger than me, I was always more charismatic. He had the power aspect and did things with brute force, I could talk my way out of trouble with parents if we did something wrong. There was always one thing that our respective mother’s always called us though… it’s on the tip of my tongue… oh right, ‘Degenerates’.
As soon as we were called that, we kind of parodied the DX line. I was limber enough to do the HBK pose and do a Superkick before it became the new DDT and he would just Spinebuster people and knew how to do the water spit. So what do you think was the main reason we even ordered this PPV for his 13th Birthday? I think the two guys we were pretending to be were set to return on a tank and toss out some glow sticks. The return of DX, Shawn Michaels coming back after Mania with Triple H to deal with the Legacy problem was an amazing return for them and made everything so much fun.
So we have the solid card and this one has a personal story… what’s my number one SummerSlam? Is it personal? Well yes but not going into that. Is it a good card? To me, it was a phenomenal card! Is it memorable? Seeing how wrestling fans still mention at least three matches to this day.
#1: 2005 (Octopus in the Washer, Lover’s Quarrel and Where the F%#$ is Vickie?)
Quite possibly some of the best matches I’ve seen and one that was just the most hilarious moments of overselling in wrestling history, I know why I love this SummerSlam but it’s also a really good card at the same time. Redacted beats Orlando Jordan in 25 seconds for the US Title and they made jokes about it like, he can make a coffee faster than he beat Orlando and stuff like that, it’s pretty funny. Angle getting sick of Eugene’s antics for his Gold Medal was also a great bit they had play up, the Year long feud of Randy Orton and Undertaker was still going on where Orton comes out on top this time around to get the win back from Mania, Jericho returning for the match with Cena in a whole promotional thing for each other’s groups, Fozzy for Jericho and the Chain Gang doing Bad, Bad Man for Cena leading up to a match for the WWE Championship. JBL won a 20 man battle royal on SmackDown to win the Championship…… Opportunity to face the newest member of SmackDown, Batista but the three main matches that a lot of people talk about to this day; Edge vs Matt Hardy, Rey vs Eddie for Dominik and Hogan vs HBK in the Main Event.
I have reasons to enjoy the Hardy/Edge match but it looked like a real fight, it really made us believe that Matt Hardy was going to kill Edge because real names were dropped during this tirade from Hardy. It wasn’t Edge and Lita, it was Adam and Amy. Matt was so dead set on beating the hell out of Edge that they made a situation into gold and it was a great moment for this match to happen, I believe it was also an Unsanctioned Match too which added the intensity until matt got concussed and knocked senseless that it looked like he couldn’t fight for anything but the build up was what made it seem like a marque match. It made it feel real, it made it feel awesome and it made it feel personal.
Eddie kept tormenting Rey Mysterio about Dominik not being Rey’s but Eddie’s for the summer. That’s all you heard from Eddie being the weasel he was is hanging out with Dominik, making the world believe it’s his son and what not (Let’s not do a fast forward to today where he has the mullet, mustache and everything like Eddie) but they settle this in a Ladder Match where the top of it is a document for the custody of Dominik and my god, this match is better than it should have been. I expect nothing else from Eddie because the man hated having a bad match, Dom got involved and stopped Eddie, Vickie was late and stopped Eddie. The whole match was good it was just very weird with the premise but was a great match. I wonder if Rey regrets his decision to win the match now…
Octopus in a Washing Machine… those five words have resonated with Shawn Michaels’ performance in this match, forever. It was supposed to be an amazing match up between Hogan and Michaels, Icon vs Icon it said and suddenly Hogan’s back gives out, can’t do a trilogy of matches so we can only do the one and then pull out of everything after. This match was set up to be a classic and instead turned into the most unbelievable sell fest ever. A Hogan big boot caused Shawn to tumble 3 or 4 times, getting crotched on the ropes had HBK bouncing higher than he should have, being tossed out of the ring made it look like Shawn never broke his back in 1998 from how much he flopped and flipped around like crazy. It’s bad… or maybe even good that a lot of current wrestlers watched this match that went, “I can sell like that, I want to be a wrestler” and did. So good or bad, I don’t know but for some reason this PPV has always had a place in my heart for how memorable it was.
Those are my top three SummerSlams so far but who knows, 2024 has potential to maybe bump something or at least get me to consider a shift. Should be fun to see how the show plays out! What are some of your favorite SummerSlams?
About Chairshot Radio Network
Launched in 2017, the Chairshot Radio Network presents you with the best in sports, entertainment, and sports entertainment. Wrestling and wrestling crossover podcasts + the most interesting content + the most engaging hosts = the most entertaining podcasts you’ll find!
MONDAY - Bandwagon Nerds (entertainment & popular culture)
TUESDAY - Musical Chairs (music) / Hockey Talk (NHL)
WEDNESDAY - The Greg DeMarco Show (wrestling)
THURSDAY - Keeping the news ridiculous... The Oddity / Chairshot NFL (NFL)
FRIDAY - DWI Podcast (Drunk Wrestling Intellect)
SATURDAY - The Mindless Wrestling Podcast
SUNDAY - The Front and Center Sports Podcast
CHAIRSHOT RADIO NETWORK PODCAST SPECIALS
Attitude Of Aggression Podcast & The Big Five Project (chronologically exploring WWE's PPV/PLE history)
TheChairshot.com PRESENTS...IMMEDIATE POST WWE PLE REACTIONS w/ DJ(Mindless), Tunney(DWI) & Friends
Patrick O'Dowd's 5X5
Classic POD is WAR
Chairshot Radio Network Your home for the hardest hitting podcasts... Sports, Entertainment and Sports Entertainment!
Powered by RedCircle
Let us know what you think on social media @ChairshotMedia and always remember to use the hashtag #UseYourHead!