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Shinjiro Ohtani


Grimmas

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Yeah, my big takeaway in considering Ohtani five years ago was that he consistently looked good as a heavyweight, which made him more than just a high-peak candidate. He's added more good matches in the time since, so I'm confident he'll find his way to the middle of my ballot. I'm not sure he's a guy I need to spend a lot of time revisiting, unless some particularly interesting strain of debate arises. 

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I'm going to do a proper deep dive on Ohtani this time around. Probably not so much the 90s stuff as I feel like I've seen all I need to see there, but I never really gave Zero-1 and beyond Ohtani a fair shake last time and even still he was on the fringes of my list. Honestly, I can take or leave most of the New Japan run at this point, but he has some really fun stuff as a heavyweight over the last 20 years or so and I should dig a bit deeper into that. 

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Ohtani is going to be a priority for me as well. I did rank him in 2016 but far too low (bottom 20) and almost entirely on his 1996 work. Just based on his 1997-1998 run (which includes underrated stuff vs. Tajiri, Yasuraoka and strong performances in tags) and a couple of 2000s matches, I suspect he should be easy Top 50. He has promising stuff pre-1996 too. With a more complete evaluation, he might even be Top 30. 

 

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Easy top 50, maybe top 30. A similar candidate to Akiyama in a lot of ways as he has basically been good non-stop his entire career but never truly succeeded as a promotional ace. Still, he's great as a fiery underdog junior, a prick heel during early Zero-1 interpromotional matches and now an elder statesmen who just had a really solid run in the Champion Carnival cut short by an injury.

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