Shinjiro Ohtani

[Grimmas]

Discuss here.

[Yo-Yo's Roomie]

Ohtani is my favourite junior heavyweight, but I haven't seen any of his heavyweight stuff. What, if any, of it is worth seeing?

[tim]

I remember really liking his 2009 IWGP title match vs. Nakamura.

 

I don't have a set position on voting for Ohtani right now, will need to revisit his stuff. I will say that it's pretty impressive that a guy so plain looking could be so expressive and charismatic.

[Ditch]

Ohtani as a heavyweight doesn't knock him out of being solid top 100 material, but I think it does mean that the 27th place he got in the SC vote was high. He's had loads of opportunities to produce MOTYCs over the last 13 years and only has a couple. The Nakamura match is very good; it's also the only really strong singles match he's had as a heavy. There are some 'fun' matches but not much that would register in a GOAT discussion.

 

Almost certainly on my ballot thanks to the juniors work, but not excessively high.

[Childs]

Ohtani's a tough one, because even his run as an elite jr. heavy was pretty short for a GOAT conversation. His SC placement looks even nuttier now. But God he was good at his best. I'd say his rivalry with Liger produced the best cruiser series in history, and that was just as much Ohtani as Liger. I'll probably end up listing him.

[ohtani's jacket]

I don't think his SC placement was nutty. It was a reflection of how highly rated his juniors work was at the time. I'm sure in 2026 some of the choices people make this time will seem nutty, but I would urge people to look at the original poll as a snapshot of the smark mentality at the time and not "Oh, they got this wrong" or "How could they have thought that?"

 

Having said that, Ohtani is a guy I wouldn't vote as high this time if only because I've discovered a bunch of new workers since then. If a couple of those '98 Liger matches were released in full, I could see there being a re-interest in him. I've always resisted his heavyweight stuff, which isn't very fair, but I doubt one or two matches will sway me unless they're particularly good.

 

[Timbo Slice]

Ohtani has one of the best stretches a junior ever had from December 1995 to February 1997. I'd actually hear arguments that the Sammy match (1/21/96), the two Lyger matches and the Ultimo match (8/20/96) are the four best junior matches ever.

 

He'll be in my Top 50-75.

[Loss]

Other Otani worth seeing and talking about that hasn't already been mentioned.

 

Shinjiro Otani & Wild Pegasus vs Great Sasuke & Black Tiger (10/09/94)

Shinjiro Otani & Wild Pegasus vs Great Sasuke & Black Tiger (10/18/94)

Shinjiro Otani vs Koji Kanemoto (04/16/95)

Shinjiro Otani vs Ultimo Dragon (12/13/95)

Shinjiro Otani vs Wild Pegasus (03/20/96)

Shinjiro Otani vs Black Tiger (06/05/96)

Shinjiro Otani vs Kazushi Sakuraba (06/17/96)

Shinjiro Otani & Koji Kanemoto vs Jushin Liger & Dr. Wagner Jr. (03/06/99)

Shinjiro Otani vs El Samurai (06/03/99)

 

I tried to avoid other high end tag matches and six-mans where he was involved, because I don't really remember his specific contributions, but those likely favor him too.

 

I'm going to stumble over how to reconcile a really disappointing heavyweight run with an absolutely tremendous junior run. A long career like the junior run would make him a top 25 candidate but the heavy stuff alone would put him nowhere in contention. So who knows.

[benjaminkicks]

He'll be on my ballot for sure, but I'm not sure how high yet.

 

 

I'd need to do some digging, but I think Ohtani has some hidden gems from the last 15 years in Zero1. Enough to pad his resume at least.

[GOTNW]

He recently had a match against Daiki Inaba (a WRESTLE-1 young lion) that was absolutely mind-blowing and really made me wish he worked somewhere other than ZERO-1.

[El-P]

Another feather in his cap is how well he worked against the UWF-I guys. He was easily the best at it. Granted, it was during his peak years, and he looked like the best worker ever during that short time. Still, it was a stylistic shift and he made it work without trying to ape the whole shoot style.

[GOTNW]

Well this is my most ambitious post so hopefully I don't botch everything. It's been thrown around a lot that Ohtani's post-New Japan work has been disappointing and mediocre, and some have even went so far that they've called it actively bad. That is something that I vehemently disagree with. I wanted to do a Matt-D esque write up of all of his strenghts and why he connects with me so much as a worker but that will have to wait as I also wanted to recommend the best post-NewJa Ohtani and realised what would be the way do to so that would be consistent with my argument. I could've just pointed to ten matches and said "this is the best of Ohtani in this time fram. watch it". And they would've all been really, really good matches, some even great, some excellent. But that would completely miss the point of who Ohtani was as a worker in that time period. And, let's face it-it is also a very long run-twice as long as his much more pimped junior run. Pointing to such a small smapling could also alienate people because they could think "well, if this is the best he could do in such a long time frame then it must've not been special at all". To me the case of post-NewJa Ohtani lies in great performances in versatility and not long singles matches. Proving Ohtani's greatness by creating a huge list would've been a pain in the ass if I didn't love him as much as I do. If anything my efforts to create such a list infuriated me because so much ZERO-1 had disappeared into the ether. But I wasn't going to spend six months on it in an effort to include everything.

 

Behold, my mega list of recommended post-NewJa Ohtani matches:

 

 

Shinjiro Ohtani vs Kazunari Murakami-Zero-1 2.3.2001
Shinjiro Ohtani vs Kazunari Murakami-Zero-1 16.4.2001
Shinjiro Ohtani vs Daisuke Sekimoto-Zero-1 1.9.2001.
Shinjiro Ohtani & Takao Omori vs Mitsuharu Misawa & Yoshinari Ogawa-NOAH 12.10.2001.
Shinjiro Ohtani, Takao Omori & Satoru Asako vs Jun Akiyama, Akitoshi Saito & Yoshinobu Kanemaru-NOAH 16.10.2001.
Shinjiro Ohtani vs Kentaro Shiga-NOAH 17.10.2001.
Shinjiro Ohtani vs Daisuke Sekimoto-BJW 2.12.2001.
Shinjiro Ohtani vs Naoya Ogawa-ZERO-1 2.3.2002.
Shinjiro Ohtani vs Yuki Ishikawa-ZERO-1 27.4.2002.
Shinjiro Ohtani & Masato Tanaka vs Kintaro Kanemura & Tetsuhiro Kuroda-ZERO-1 29.6.2002.
Shinjiro Ohtani vs Samoa Joe-ZERO-1 Fire Festival 2002
Shinjiro Ohtani vs Tetsuhiro Kuroda-zero-1 Fire Festival 2002
Shinjiro Ohtani vs TAKA Michinoku-zero-1 28.7.2002.
Shinjiro Ohtani vs Masato Tanaka-ZERO-1 31.7.2002.
Shinjiro Ohtani & Masato Tanaka vs Jun Akiyama & Akitoshi Saito-NOAH 10.1.2003.
Shinjiro Ohtani & Masato Tanaka vs Kenta Kobashi & KENTA-NOAH 13.1.2003.
Shinjiro Ohtani, Masato Tanaka, Ryoji Sai & Ogasawara vs Satoshi Kojima, Arashi, Araya & Kendo Kashin-AJPW 23.2.2003.
Shinjiro Ohtani & Masato Tanaka vs Hideki Hosaka & Shigeo Okumura-AJPW 12.4.2003.
Shinjiro Ohtani & Masato Tanaka vs Tetsuhiro Kuroda & Kintaro Kanemura-Fuyuki Army 3.5.2003.
Shinjiro Ohtani, Masato Tanaka & Hideki Hosaka vs Toshiaki Kawada, Araya & Shigeo Okumura-AJPW 13.6.2003.
Shinjiro Ohani vs Satoshi Kojima-ZERO-1 1.8.2003.
Shinjiro Ohtani vs Satoshi Kojima-AJPW 6.9.2003.
Shinjiro Ohtani vs Toshiaki Kawada-AJPW 6.9.2003.
Shinjiro Ohtani vs BAD BOY Hido-Fuyuki Army 22.9.2003.
Shinjiro Ohtani vs Shinya Hashimoto-ZERO-1 24.12.2003.
Shinjiro Ohtani & Tatsuhito Takaiwa vs Masato Tanaka & Yoshihito Sasaki-Fuyuki Army 5.5.2004.
Shinjiro Ohtani, Kintaro Kanemura & Takao Omori vs Riki Choshu, Tatsuhito Takaiwa & Tomohiro Ishii-ZERO-1 15.8.2004.
Shinjiro Ohtani & Takao Omori vs Masato Tanaka & Sakata-Zero-1 3.10.2004.
Shinjiro Ohtani & Tatsuhito Takaiwa vs Mitsuharu Misawa & Koraro Suzuki-NOAH 5.3.2005.
Shinjiro Ohtani vs Super Tiger-RJPW 9.6.2005.
Shinjiro Ohtani, Masato Tanaka & Ryan Sakoda vs Kohei Sato, Yoshihito Sasaki & Hirotaka Yokoi-ZERO-1 17.6.2005.
Shinjiro Ohtani, Tatsuhito Takaiwa & Yoshihito Sasaki vs Kensuke Sasaki, Katsuhiko Nakajima & Rikiya Fudo-ZERO-1 2.8.2005.
Shinjiro Ohtani vs Kensuke Sasaki-ZERO-1 Fire Festival 2005
Shinjiro Ohtani vs Osamu Namiguchi-ZERO-1 29.9.2005.
Shinjiro Ohtani vs Koji Kanemoto-NJPW 4.1.2006.
Shinjiro Ohtani, Masato Tanaka & Tatsuhito Takaiwa vs Daisuke Sekimoto, Kohei Sato & Yoshihito Sasaki-ZERO-1 28.3.2006.
Shinjiro Ohtani vs Kazunari Murakami-ZERO-1 20.7.2006.
Shinjiro Ohtani vs Masato Tanaka vs Kazunari Murakami vs Yutaka Yoshie-ZERO-1 29.7.2006.
Shinjiro Ohtani & Kazunari Murakami vs Takeshi Morishima & Mohammed Yone-NOAH 25.11.2006.
Shinjiro Ohtani, Kazunari Murakami & Tatsuhito Takaiwa vs Jun Akiyama, Makoto Hashi & Yoshinobu Kanemaru-NOAH 2.12.2006.
Shinjiro Ohtani, Kazunari Murakami & Takao Omori vs Yoshihiro Takayama, Kohei Sato & Hirata Yokoi ZERO-1 19.1.2007.
Shinjiro Ohtani & Takao Omori vs Yoshihiro Takayama & Kohei Sato-ZERO-1 18.2.2007.
Shinjiro Ohtani & Yuji Nagata vs Masato Tanaka & Ryoji Sai-ZERO-1 13.11.2007.
Shinjiro Ohtani & Takao Omori vs Yuji Nagata & Manabu Nakanishi-ZERO-1 26.6.2008.
Shinjiro Ohtani vs Hiroshi Tanahashi-NJPW 17.8.2008.
Shinjiro Ohtani vs Shito Ueda-ZERO-1 28.11.2008.
Shinjiro Ohtani vs Kazuchika Okada-Premium 26.12.2008.
Shinjiro Ohtani vs Kohei Sato-ZERO-1 1.7.2009.
Shinjiro Ohtani vs Kohei Sato vs Akebono vs Ikuto Hidaka-ZERO-1 8.8.2009.
Shinjiro Ohtani vs Shinsuke Nakamura-NJPW 12.10.2009.
Shinjiro Ohtani & Kenta Kakinuma vs Daisuke Sekimoto & Ryoji Sai-ZERO-1 24.10.2009.
Shinjiro Ohtani vs Kuniyoshi Wada-Lock-UP 17.1.2010.
Shinjiro Ohtani & Daichi Hashimoto vs Kensuke Sasaki & Katsuhiko Nakajima-ZERO-1 2.3.2012.
Shinjiro Ohtani vs Daichi Hashimoto-ZERO-1 25.3.2012.
Shinjiro Ohtani & Daichi Hashimoto vs Takeshi Morishima & Katsuhiko Nakajima-NOAH 29.4.2012.
Shinjiro Ohtani vs Go Shiozaki-ZERO-1 5.8.2012.
Shinjiro Ohtani & Daichi Hashimoto vs Tatsuhito Takaiwa & Tomohiro Ishii-Ribera Steakhouse Produce 26.8.2012.
Shinjiro Ohtani & Keiji Mutoh vs Satoshi Kojima & Hiroyoshi Tenzan-NJPW 4.1.2013.
Shinjiro Ohtani & Katsuhiko Nakajima vs Kensuke Sasaki & Takashi Sugiura-Dimaond Ring 11.2.2013.
Shinjiro Ohtani vs Kazuki Hashimoto-Zero 1 3.2.2013.
Shinjiro Ohtani vs Kazuki Hashimoto-BJW 17.3.2013.
Shinjiro Ohtani & Kohei Sato vs Masakatsu Funaki & Taiyo Kea-WRESTLE-1 27.6.2014.
Shinjiro Ohtani vs Masakatsu Funaki-WRESTLE-1 6.9.2014.
Shinjiro Ohtani & Koji Kanemoto vs Katsuhiko Nakajima & Yuko Miyamoto-Kana Pro 25.2.2015.
Shinjiro Ohtani vs Daiki Inaba-WRESTLE-1 13.3.2015.
Shinjiro Ohtani vs Mizuki Watase-DNA 22.9.2015.
Shinjiro Ohtani vs Minoru Tanaka-ZERO-1 11.10.2015.

 

 

I bolded the best stuff(well I tried anyway. there's a lot of stuff in here). I didn't include anything I didn't enjoy. Some matches are there more for Ohtani's performance than anything (2-3 tops, the Wrestle Kingdom 7(2013) tag would be the best example of this). The (last on the list) Minoru Tanaka match is above average but I wouldn't have included if I didn't love the storyline surrounding it. Anyway. Ohtani vs rookies and undercard wrestlers rules. Ohtani as an invader rules. Ohtani defending his home turf rules. Ohtani in big brawls rules. Ohtani in faux deathmatches rules. Ohtani in inexplicably great fatal four aways I had no idea existed rules. You get the running theme. Tomorrow I will edit this post and add a part where I'll pair matches with mentioned match types and add some not aforementioned as well. Good night.

 

[Edwin]

Shinjiro Otani vs Kazushi Sakuraba (06/17/96)

This was a pretty awesome beatdown from Ohtani from what I recall. He hits Sakuraba with some pretty brutal springboard moves.

 

I'd actually hear arguments that the Sammy match (1/21/96)

This is my favorite Jr. match of all time. Ohtani's arm selling is among my favorite moments ever.

[Jimmy Redman]

Ohtani is easily my favourite juniors worker aside from Liger. That's not as high praise as it sounds because the juniors style isn't really my thing, but the best stuff outstrips my dislike of the style and Ohtani's best stuff is just ridiculously good. He's the guy that I most look forward to seeing in an 8-minute Super Juniors tourney match.

 

His springboard dropkick is a thing of beauty. I like how he always makes his stuff look impactful, even when he's doing flips and shit. He launches his body into things really violently.

 

He's a guy that I've watched enough of for the purposes of this project, but I'm still keen to watch so much more. Sometimes I get fatigued from binge watching a particular guy for too long, but Ohtani still intrigues me.

[GOTNW]

When done in tags his Springboard Dropkick is probably my favourite transition ever, the way he'll just come flying into frame is unreal and so fundamentally brilliant it comes across as unexpected the 15th time you see it as it did the first time. He even made it work the one time I saw him botch it by bullying the ref after the match and claiming the ropes were too loose.

[Childs]

GOTNW inspired me to do a little run through my stack of Zero-One shows (which was a gloriously weird promotion for a few years while Hash was still alive) and I basically have to agree with him that heavyweight Ohtani was pretty damn good. He still had cool offense, still projected a ton of personality into his matches and adjusted well to a wide variety of opponents. He's hurt by the fact Z-1 was an underwatched promotion and by the fact his good matches weren't epics like his classics against Liger and Sammy. But he sure didn't fall off a cliff.

[Jetlag]

He also did some really fun stuff in NOAH, working as a heel invader there.

[Clayton Jones]

I couldn't agree more with GOTNW and have been saying as much about heavyweight Otani for a long time. While the '95-97 run is what cements him in my top 25 for certain, his consistently fun work as a heavyweight doesn't hinder him at all either. The three matches opposite Murakami are ones I can go back to over and over again.

[JerryvonKramer]

I've just asked this on Twitter, but why not ask here too: I've seen a bit of him watching 90s NJ stuff recently, but where's his jacket? I keep looking out for it.

 

Basically OJ, I'm curious about the origins of your screen name.

[ohtani's jacket]

Keep watching for it.

[GOTNW]

More songs about Ohtani:

We've seen a lot of discussion about peak vs. longevity, consistency, input vs. output etc. over the course of the last year and a half and all the GWE discussion that came along with the project. What I find fascinating about Ohtani is that offers everything yet changes drastically as a worker. He *gets it* almost instantly and his highly touted junior matches are what people first bring up with him. And, as great as they are, what I find equally as impressive with him is how he would work 4 minute Super J Cup matches and matches vs UWFi workers. The way he build matches vs. Mochizuki and Super Delfin blew me away, they had the same feel of epics that lasted five times longer and an unparalleled sense of urgency. I think I've watched his match vs. Kenichi Yamamoto like three times and I almost never rewatch matches. I also enjoyed the few matches he had in WCW for whatever that's worth. I might just like his heavyweight run even more. I don't know whether many would agree with I would put the Murakami matches up there with anything he's ever done, and even if he is lacking in "great matches" I don't see it as an issue whatsoever. I'm not Matt D in that how many roles a wrestler can work in and such is what I first think about when judging someone but Ohtani is so great at it it's undeniable. That he could get great matches out of Sekimoto while having clear goals to accomplish in them with establishing Sekimoto is much more impressive to me than having great matches where the end goal is just to have a great match. I'm an absolute sucker for his acting and goofy facial expressions. By all acounts they shouldn't work. But they do. His ability to connect with the crowd and form an almost intimate relationship with the viewer is a big reason why he can have something like the match vs. Minoru Tanaka from last December and also why ZERO-1 still exists honestly. His act is a perfect fit for smaller arenas but can translate well to bigger arenas as well whenever he shows up in NOAH/All Japan/New Japan etc. He'll do stuff like start an Ohtani chant himself, and if it was someone else it could come off almost laughable and definitely as trying too hard-but it works with him. He has fun shtick like the Facewash, can work in any environment and adapt on the spot. It's fitting his catchphrase is "believe"-both because his entrances will sometimes have cool touches like him closing his eyes for a bit when his theme song starts playing or praying before a match-and because there is very tangible belief fans have in him that has allowed him to the work he has in the last 15 years. For my money he has almost 25 years of great work.

 

[Jetlag]

It's kinda weird that Ohtani actually made the top 100. I think his 2000s stuff gets barely pimped. Like there are what, 5matches from that 16 year period that get praised (ignoring the outstanding GOTNW post on page 1)? For me Ohtani is a mixed bag. I actually like those matches vs. Mochizuki, Tajiri, Delfin, Sasuke, the rookie squashes etc. better than the stuff with Liger and Ultimo. He made my list but not terribly high.

[elliott]

I ranked Shinjiro Ohtani 75th in 2016 and I'm ok with that. I think his best stuff holds up really well. He was really good right away and at his best is awesome. Great charisma, could sell, and one of the best offensive wrestlers ever. Other than Liger he was probably the best of the 90s juniors. Cool dad and cool jacket. :) 

[Tim Cooke]

Best springboard dropkick ever.  High end peak but it was short.  His 1996-1997 holds up.

[elliott]

The running boot rake too! How many people have (rightfully) stolen that?