Tatsumi Fujinami

[Boss Rock]

Honestly, most of my favorite Fujinami matches are from the 90's. No doubt he was a great technician in the 70's and 80's, but I prefer his 90's work.

[ohtani's jacket]

That's an interesting take. Is there a specific reason for that? 

[Boss Rock]

Just more of a personal preference really. Mat-heavy matches aren't always my cup of tea and 90's Fujinami seemed more likely to trade strikes or have grittier fights against guys like Tenryu or Hash. That being said, the '86 Maeda match is still my favorite.

[Righteous River]

I think Fujinami's stylistic changes in the 90s are a little exaggerated. He obviously toned down his pace and bumping but he was still just as technically proficient as ever and had a lot of very mat-heavy matches as well. For me, his aging and his injuries didn't hurt the quality of his work too much either as it allowed him to tell really interesting and different stories in his matches. I believe the change in his matches during the 90s has more to do with the NJPW heavyweight style shifting towards a slower pace and becoming more strike and bomb-based than him changing as an individual wrestler.

[concrete1992]

Fujinami is someone I believe on a certain level I should love. The way folks talk about him and how he works, I thought he was a shoe-in for top 20, maybe top 10. The flashes I had seen from the 90s and 2000s, not at the height of his powers allegedly made me feel like he was the one.

Well, as I round the bend on '83 on a 1980s NJPW list comp/list he isn't the wrestler I was hoping for. So many of these matches throw in these dull as dirt headlocks. In general these tholds that seem like they have no end in sight, will put you right to sleep. At least they did for me. These holds don't feel like they give a greater impression of a struggle nor are they worked in a way that makes me feel like either party is trying to alter their circumstances. Seemed like a consistent flaw in these matches.

I still come away thinking he's quite good! There are matches where he bucks this structure and low and behold we have a barnburner. I think the 1980s Kengo Kimura match is probably among the handful of best matches I have seen from the 80s NJPW comp/list. When he wants to turn the dial up he can turn the dial-up. And maybe this is just a structure I hate that he implements against the foreign wrestlers for whatever reason.

Still a guy who could make my list, has probably the highest highs of the wrestlers I've seen, though has had more opportunities outside of maybe Inoki.

[Childs]

4 hours ago, concrete1992 said:

Well, as I round the bend on '83 on a 1980s NJPW list comp/list he isn't the wrestler I was hoping for. So many of these matches throw in these dull as dirt headlocks. In general these tholds that seem like they have no end in sight, will put you right to sleep. At least they did for me. These holds don't feel like they give a greater impression of a struggle nor are they worked in a way that makes me feel like either party is trying to alter their circumstances. Seemed like a consistent flaw in these matches.

Did you feel that way about the Choshu matches? Those always struck me as the epitome of struggle.

[strobogo]

I know you're not asking me and this isn't specific to Choshu vs Fujinami matches, but fuck Choshu's spending anywhere from 25 to 50% of any given match over 10 minutes sitting in half a scorpion is coming off as the laziest shit and blatant filler while he waits to pop up after someone's finish and win with a lariat or just happen to be distracted while his partner drops a fall. 

[ohtani's jacket]

The '93 G1 final was another good match. Fujinami was definitely one of the instigators of using the other guy's finisher, which became one of the most annoying tropes in wrestling. 

[concrete1992]

20 hours ago, Childs said:

Did you feel that way about the Choshu matches? Those always struck me as the epitome of struggle.

Didn't feel this way about the first one and need to rewatch the second as I bailed halfway through. As he gets away from junior title defenses against international talent I could also see the formula fading more.

[Microstatistics]

There was a brief debate about this in the GME threads but I feel his post-1989 drop-off is way overblown. In fact, I think he could be a Top 100 contender just based on his post-prime. Throw in a 11 year peak and his versatility and you have a Top 20 guy.

[Tetsujin]

Yeah I'm with Micro here. He's a guy I can see making my top 15-20. I don't think his 70s and early 80s stuff should be considered part of his peak, he was an amazing athlete, but his work had almost no personality behind it most of the time. That's until the Choshu feud, obviously. 83-88 Fujinami is as amazing as you would expect. And in his post-prime stuff he has very good showcases of him not only still being good, but playing his new role as an old veteran perfectly (the biggest example for me being the 98 Hashimoto title match, his body language alone carries a beautiful story).

 

I think the biggest argument for him it's his versatility: guy could work the mat pretty well, long strong style matches, short strong style matches, short sprints, could brawl, could bleed in a big way, amazing seller, amazing and innovative offensive wrestler, always the greatest star of those multiman matches, great as a veteran... The only two NJPW wrestlers I see right now higher than him are Liger and Tanahashi (think about all the more-than-great wrestlers I put him ahead of).

[ohtani's jacket]

You guys are out to lunch!

The Ryuma Go series, the Calgary match against Dynamite Kid, the Kimura matches, the Teranishi match, the Tony Rocco match, the freaking Ray Mendoza match, Fujinami was spectacular before the Choshu feud. There was a Fujinami boom in Japan prior to the Choshu feud. He was the number three guy in the promotion once he returned from his overseas excursion, replacing Strong Kobayashi who had slowed down by that point. Personality is a real sticking point. It's easy to say this guy had black trunks. a salaryman hair cut and no personality, but Japanese fans didn't think so. Personally. I think he was a brilliant wrestler as a junior, and perfectly fiery, but he also had the qualities in Japan that people value both in terms of his strength and his grace. That's why he continued to be popular throughout his career. I get the mentality of "now he's a veteran, and he's grumpy and showing more personality."  I can see how people gravitate toward that, but his early work is full of virtue and aesthetics that couldn't help but appeal to Japanese fans. 

[ohtani's jacket]

The '98 Hashimoto match is even better than the '94 one. It's getting harder and harder to see Fujinami as anything less than a top 10 Japanese worker. 

[Clayton Jones]

Fujinami is a fascinating candidate for me because he checks all the boxes guys in my top 15 or so do yet I have him at least twice as many spots lower on my rough draft. This discussion is highlighting some of the reasons for that disconnect and covers a lot of points I'll want to focus on with him. I'll definitely spend a significant chunk of time on Fujinami. The last time I revisited the Choshu matches I liked them even better for what that's worth.

[GOTNW]

15 hours ago, ohtani's jacket said:

The '98 Hashimoto match is even better than the '94 one. It's getting harder and harder to see Fujinami as anything less than a top 10 Japanese worker. 

It truly is. An absolutely epic match, and a great performance by Fujinami too!

It's also the only spectacular performance I ever saw from 90s Fujinami that I would put on the same level he performed at before the injury. The 94 Hashimoto match is great, but the amount of matches Hashimoto had that are around that quality or even better makes it hard to really put is as a feather in injured Fujinami's cap. If you look at Fujinami's post-prime stuff, it's not like he suddenly forgot how to work, but I think it's clear he's not performing on the level he once was.

"He had some good matches here and there" is a nice thing for me to say about Mutoh or Chono. It's hardly a compliment to Fujinami when I compare it to his previous work.

Now that I think about it, Fujinami is probably a worker whom I like more the earlier he was in his career. His junior run was absolutely phenomenal: if he had a longer run like that, he'd probably have finished as my #1 in the last poll.

[elliott]

I ranked Tatsumi Fujinami 8th in 2016 and I feel great about that. I very much doubt I'll rank him that high again, but it won't be much lower. I think he's awesome, one of the best of all time and  I would strongly encourage anyone to watch as  much Fujinami as possible. Him finishing in the top 20 in 2016 was a big win overall in my mind and I would put him ahead of most of the people that finished  in the top 20 ahead of him. 

[KB8]

I had Fujinami at number 17 in 2016 and I figure he'll be about there again in 2026. I think we're pretty well past the idea that Fujinami wasn't any good in the 90s, but even still, his case is predominantly made in the 80s (and maybe even the 70s more than the 90s) and by christ was Fujinami amazing in the 80s. There's no point repeating what's already been said in this thread, but he was a great singles, tag and multi-man wrestler. A great mat worker. A great juniors ace and a great heavyweight ace. An outstanding babyface. A metric fucking boatload of good matches. One of the 10 best wrestlers from Japan, one of the 20 best wrestlers from anywhere. 

 

TATSUMI FUJINAMI YOU SHOULD WATCH:

v Mando Guerrero (LA, 8/11/78)

v Ryuma Go (New Japan, 11/30/78)

v Dynamite Kid (New Japan, 2/5/80)

v Riki Choshu (New Japan, 4/3/83)

w/Antonio Inoki, Nobuhiko Takada, Yoshiaki Fujiwara & Kengo Kimura v Riki Choshu, Yoshiaki Yatsu, Animal Hamaguchi, Isamu Teranishi & Kuniaki Kobayashi (New Japan, 4/19/84)

w/Antonio Inoki, Kengo Kimura, Umanosuke Ueda & Kantaro Hoshino v Akira Maeda, Yoshiaki Fujiwara, Osamu Kido, Nobuhiko Takada & Kazuo Yamazaki (New Japan, 3/26/86)

v Akira Maeda (New Japan, 6/12/86)

v Kengo Kimura (New Japan, 1/2/87)

v Antonio Inoki (New Japan, 8/8/88)

 w/Keiichi Yamada, Shiro Koshinaka, Yoshiaki Fujiwara & Kengo Kimura v Hiro Saito, Kuniaki Kobayashi, Super Strong Machine, Masa Saito & Riki Choshu (New Japan, 9/12/88)

v Vader (New Japan, 4/24/89)

w/Takayuki Iizuka v Steiner Brothers (WCW WrestleWar, 5/27/92)

w/Masa Chono v Genichiro Tenryu & Ashura Hara (New Japan, 7/14/93)

v Shinya Hashimoto (New Japan, 6/5/98)

v Osamu Nishimura (MUGA, 9/25/06)

[El-P]

The 90's really don't bring much to Fujinami's track records. He had a few really strong performances where he reminds me that he once used to be great, mostly against Hashimoto (who was at his peak) and Tenryu (who was pretty much at his peak too in some ways), some fun tag or multi matches stuff too and some *good* single stuff here and there (but fun and good stuff is pretty irrelevant in this context, which makes it a bit frustrating actually, since I tend to enjoy it less than I would if I wasn't in GWE mode). He also has a bunch of really, really poor matches/performances where he does exactly *nothing* in context that called for the opposite (the Choshu dome show match comes to mind, between this and the extremely rare mediocre Tenryu match in 93, Choshu was out of luck it seems), which was really a staple of bad past prime Fujinami in a very "less is less" fashion. Unlike Choshu, whose 90's are absolutely a continuation of his great 80's, I really feel revisiting the 90's that past-prime Fujinami is about dealing with a huge case of confirmation bias because everytime I see a Fuji match I come in with so much goodwill and the idea that somehow it's gonna be really good, but if I'm perfectly honest, I tend to over-emphasize whenever he does stuff I enjoy (with the exceptions of the few legit great performances).

So there. In the end the 90's are a minor for his case, but when compared to his amazing 80's it's actually very , very minor if looked at it without the lens of "He's Fujinami, he used to be the greatest worker in the world at one point therefore he's still great in some ways". Considering what I used to think about his 90's, it's still a positive I guess, but Choshu's 90's murder Fujinami's in pretty ghoulish fashion (to the point I'm actually wondering career vs career if I don't actually take Choshu over Fuji, although Fuji's peak is pretty undeniable). Now that I think of it, Osamu Kido's 90's are probably much better too...

I guess the one thing I get from this (comparing Choshu & Fuji's 90's) is that you really make your case with your prime for me. I think. I'm guessing. Or maybe only when it suits me the best. Not sure, infact.

It's quite interesting though to see how much Mutoh lifted from him, for better *and* for worse (and then Tanahashi of course, which is following this straight line, only much better in every way).

[Childs]

Fujinami's prime was long, which gives him a boost over your more traditional peak candidates. He really hit two peaks - junior ace beginning in 1977 and heavyweight in the '80s. He also had a legitimately great match in 2006, which is another unusual data point. I find that I care less now about volume of "great" matches or length of career (not that I'll ignore those things when we get to list time) and more about a simple question: How much do I enjoy watching this person wrestle? There's almost no one I'd rather watch than a young Fujinami. 

[Ma Stump Puller]

Fujinami's longevity definitely has to be commended: even after 2006 he has occasionally good matches with game opponents (Funaki in 2015/Tamura in 2021) he has goofy spectacle showings (Mascaras in 2011/endless vet matches) and generally will always give out a competent performance even at his most phoned in. 

Of course he was gonna be in the top 100 regardless of the above, it's just a nice feature to put on top of everything else. I'm a sucker for wrestlers who have great volume of work and he most definitely qualifies.