Kensuke Sasaki

[MikeCampbell]

I've hated him since 2002 or so. He rarely puts anyone over, and when he does, it's usually a lousy performance. Not all that far away from Brody now that I think about it.

[Quantum]

Kensuke Sasaki to me is great. He has his classic Tokyo Dome matches with Kawada, Tenryu, Kobashi, and Nagata. He was the face and ace of NJPW in the late 1990's. He reinvented himself and carried Bob Sapp to a fun and exciting match in 2004. He was responsible for Nakajima as a pro wrestler. He was the first IWGP/TC/GHC champion.

[jdw]

I was trying to recall the times I've seen him live, and he leaves such a memory with me that I had to go look them up.

 

03/27/95 Masahiro Chono over Kensuke Sasaki (21:33)

 

This one comes back to me. This was one of those matches that "in the building" and "in the right mood" is the type that comes off as being perfectly decent. Main event of a card that had only one quality match (Pegasus & Otani vs BT & Kanemoto) and one other good performance (Nagata carrying Nakanishi). They were going main event length rather than working 12-15 minutes, so they killed time working holds and what not. None of it had a lot to do with the finish, but they're New Japan guys so they've had the basics of Strong Style drilled into their head. Solid, slow build, professional match. Of course I'd rather have Hash in there, but this one looked "bad on paper" and turned out to be pretty watchable. Probably wouldn't come off well on TV.

 

08/02/96 G1: Kensuke Sasaki over Hiroyoshi Tenzan (15:03)

 

Same night as these:

 

Chono vs Kojima

Yamazaki vs Mutoh

Choshu vs Hashimoto

 

Choshu vs Hashimoto is one of my favorite, most memorable live matches every. In turn, I really enjoyed Yamazaki-Mutoh live as well. Chono-Kojima was fun as well. I see Dave gave Sasaki-Tenzan ***1/2, but it's the one that's most forgetable.

 

08/03/96 G1: Kensuke Sasaki over Junji Hirata (5:08)

 

Kensuke maimed Hirata in this, sending him onto the DL. Whatever they had planned couldn't come off. Same night as:

 

Mutoh vs Kojima

Choshu vs Tenzan

Koshinaka vs Yamazaki

 

I'm forgetting Mutoh-Kokima. The Choshu match was disappointing as Riki didn't seem up to do much, and pretty much topped Tenzan. Kosh-Yamazaki was a load of fun, and a surprisingly effective main event.

 

Sasaki had the next night off, with us getting:

 

Yamazaki vs Kojima

Hashimoto vs Tenzan

Koshinaka vs Chono

 

Choshu would have faced Hirata here. Anyway, the main was very solid. Hash-Tenzan was terrific for what it was (Hash working the injury). Drawing a blank on the Yamazaki-Kojima. But overall, two more entertaining matches.

 

08/05/96 G1: Riki Choshu over Kensuke Sasaki (15:13)

 

Other G1 matches that night:

 

Chono vs Yamazaki

Mutoh vs Koshinaka

 

Liked the main event a good deal, but I'm biased: I was really digging Kosh working three straight main events against tricky opponents and getting the crowd into all of them. Chono-Yamazaki was well below the Mutoh-Yamazaki and Kosh-Yamazaki matches.

 

Choshu-Sasaki? It was disappointing, and never really hit the teacher-student tension/dynamic that one would have hoped for.

 

08/06/96 G1: Kensuke Sasaki over Shinya Hashimoto (9:13)

 

Other G1 matches:

 

Koshinaka vs Kojima

Chono vs Mutoh

Choshu vs Chono (Final)

 

Kosh-Kojima was fun. Chono-Mutoh was solid, and they filled a lot of time with it. I've always been glad to have seen one of their matches where they were working together well. Not their best, but very solid. Choshu-Chono was a pretty flat final.

 

Sasaki-Hash? Really rough after Hash's terrific performances with Choshu and Tenzan.

 

And that's pretty typical of what I felt about Sasaki in the 90s. There were a lot of other guys in New Japan putting on matches that were entertaining or solid or fun or great. With Sasaki, you might get one of those out of five, and usually in the Solid range.

 

He strikes me as the New Japan equiv of DDP. He gets pushed because of his connections. You tend to see the effort in him work, not in the sense of "working hard" but in the sense of:

 

"Here's is where I do A... and then I do B next... and wait a minute... C... C... what was C... right, that was C..."

 

DDP worked hard, but there was a strong sense of rudimentary work and thought process in it, rather than anything that felt like it was flowing. You could see DDP working, rather than just enjoy it.

 

Sasaki was like that. Without the charisma, which of course DDP really worked far too hard at in the ring.

 

Sasaki did last forever, while his peers dropped dead, or broke down, or just faded away. By default he got to be at a certain level among them.

 

Hard to say I hate him. Largely bored by him in the 90s, and kind of got nervous when ever you could see some of the pushes coming along.

[WingedEagle]

DDP worked hard, but there was a strong sense of rudimentary work and thought process in it, rather than anything that felt like it was flowing. You could see DDP working, rather than just enjoy it.

 

Sasaki was like that.

I like the way you put that. You watch some guys and it looks like its completely effortless and that they're putting their all into everything they do. Others, they're on the clock.

[jdw]

I think DDP enjoyed it. The "enjoy" was more aimed at a *viewer* who get's that the two are in their working together.

 

With a lot of good wrestling, you get that they're doing cool stuff and it's meant to get a reaction. But there's a flow to it that holds together, and you can enjoy it.

 

With other stuff, it's very clear that they're mentally counting along to the dance steps they've learned: 1-2-3, a 1-2-3, dip, spin, 1-2-3... etc. It's really hard to get into the work when the work is at that level.

 

The most obvious is if you're watching some backyard wrestling shit.

 

With DDP, the shit came across as laid out... which was also the rumor that was out there. It also felt like certain people had to slow down / dumb down their shit so DDP could keep up. That made it tougher to watch as well.

 

I don't think DDP was a shitty worker. In fact, I like a decent amount of his stuff in WCW. He tried hard, and tried hard to get better. He worked at connecting with the fans, and learned what got reactions. It's just that...

 

Large chunks of his work didn't have the flow of good dancing, and instead looked like someone really having to remember his steps, and dance at a pace to keep from getting lost. And that's not even a "slow methodical" thing, which I don't mind either.

 

Sasaki felt like that to me.

[Ryan Faulconer]

I'm late to the party here so forgive me if I've missed a couple of these points.

 

When I first read about Sasaki online back in 1998-99 people either called him lazy or Kensucky or ripped on him for marrying and ruining whatever fantasy they had about Akira Hokuto. I enjoyed his reinvention/reinvigoration over the next few years a lot and most people over at the DVDVRMB seemed to appreciate his improvement. He also received a whole new level of appreciation from the Dragon Gate fans when he joined the Florida Brothers and did a bunch of comedy stuff there. I thought it was pretty forced and not as good as the TARU/Stalker stuff...so there's that against him.

 

I really enjoyed his slugfest matches but he wasn't on the level of Tenryu or Takayama or Kawada or whoever he usually matched up against in that style. I don't think he could have had exciting matches like those without his opponent bringing most of the interest from the crowd heat.

 

There might be a HHH comparison somewhere to be found with Sasaki but I don't want to talk about HHH