Yoshinari Ogawa

[Ma Stump Puller]

I had Yoshinari Ogawa #24 on my ballot and was the high vote. My thoughts on Rat Boy are I'd say at this point well documented, I've spent more time than anyone else reasonably should have watching everything related to him from the 2000/2010's, mostly because I think his floor is still indisputably the widest out of anyone else I've really seen. He was fantastic for almost 3 decades-worth of material, even his momentous 2020's work with Kaito made him seem someone perfectly capable of working far greater than his ambition at the time allowed and he kept being sporadically amazing up until his final great performance with the Ridgeway singles in 2023.

Before then you have, I believe, one of the finest career spreads you could possibly dream up; someone who was wrestling pretty well in the 1980's, was apart of the legendary AJPW six-man tags in the early 1990's, benefited immensely from the wider Jr heavyweight coverage of the mid 90's, then Misawa picks him up and we get his beginnings as a fantastic scrappy babyface that fills in the emotive/bumping hole that late-Misawa was leaving behind. He carries that into NOAH where he gets his career peak as champion in the early 2000's before spending the rest of the decade as an incredible multi-role talent who was either having these out-there British Catch matches with Doug Williams or getting over new fresh talent like KENTA and co. He exceled in tags, being the more watchable out of Misawa and co during their very long stint as champions with his stellar attention to detail and capacity to make other people seem like complete killers even if they were uber down the card (see Inoue/Saito etc etc).

The neck injury changes a lot about his style. He has to do less stooge-bumping where he bounces all over the place and far more focus on crafty technical attacks, no longer being able to wrestle heavyweights but instead the Jr division exclusively. Could you imagine if, say, your favourite wrestler had to spontaneously wrestle in a whole different division? Most I feel like would struggle with the transition (especially in NOAH, where their Jr division was significantly more high-spotty) but Ogawa nails it from his first match and then the subsequent decade afterwards by knowing how to get these guys just enough room to do their thing without either slowing them down completely or compromising his own style to suit their own. His tag stint with Zack Sabre Jr I'd say from viewing made Sabre a significantly more refined act, letting him focus on creative limb-work and how to carry that momentum throughout a longer match without slowing down too much or giving up on the effort, and he gives him one of his greatest singles matches as well for his farewell match to boot. He becomes a lot more of a role-player as the decade continues, but you still have him giving people like Minoru Suzuki or Marufuji their best work or showcasing solid acts like Yuya Susumu to a wider audience. It cannot be understated how many times where, despite the match not being great, Ogawa is ALWAYS in a position where his work makes sense or is attempting to make it seem greater than it is. His only real weakness being that he had a tendency to drag out matches a bit longer than expected, a real Brian Wilson-ism where he tries fitting in too much all at once where the work can feel like it's making other elements inessential or compromising the quality as a whole but this is extremely rare and only truly comes up when his opponent is not capable of making the structure of the match (limb-work selling, comebacks etc) feel easier to watch than it should. 

So yeah, 3 decades of great matches, for me the undisputed best at going for limbs (even stuff like the eyes or head aren't safe!) one of the finest technical workers of his time etc etc. He should have been lower and it's a shame that despite heavily adding to his case since 2016 he finishes far above that rating. I suspect that his tendency towards subtle, smart wrestling and lack of GIF-able moments like certain other wrestlers was probably the main contributing factor but ig that's how it goes