Shiro Koshinaka

[Grimmas]

Discuss here.

[Grimmas]

He had great butt offense, but is anybody going to vote for him?

[El-P]

Most probably. Could make any kind of shitty NJ undercard program watchable, and even fun. Gotta rewatch some of his junior work soon, as part of my "rewatch some Takada" project.

[W2BTD]

He had great butt offense, but is anybody going to vote for him?

 

Influenced Ryusuke Taguchi's awful gimmick, disqualified.

 

Also, looks like the Japanese Steve Blackman.

[El-P]

But his body of work is more like the Japanese Arn Anderson though.

[GOTNW]

It says a lot about him that he could credibly incorporate "hip attacks" into his offence back when japanese wrestling wasn't filled with bullshit.

[jdw]

Japan was filled with plenty of bullshit. Brody was a big star, and he was all bullshit.

[Jetlag]

I enjoy him in those WAR tags punching dudes in the face but I've also heard bad things about him. I think I've seen 1 or 2 matches from the 2000s where he looks kind of Momota-ish but sadly doesn't do any face punching. Recommendations?

[elliott]

Jetlag mentioned this way back in 2015, "Ive heard bad things about him." I've heard whispers of this too. Presumably on the heels of the NJPW 80s set? I've never seen a full takedown of Koshinaka and I don't really want to. I'm way more interested random recommendations for him. I wouldn't go as far as @El-P did in the last go round with his Japanese Arn Anderson line. But I get where hes going with that. Super fun midcarder. You could put together an interesting comp that shows him in a variety of settings. The Satanico match, the Aoyagi match, the Tenryu match, other WAR tag matches, the 96 G1 Climax run was super fun. I know the Takada matches are super polarizing but I dug the broken fingers match last time I watched it. Finished 77th in 2006 which is bonkers high and fell to 286 in 2016. Realistically he is probably closer to 286 than 77th, but Ive always liked him and I would recommend his best stuff to people. 

[KB8]

I've come around a bit on Koshinaka over the years. Honestly, my memory of the Takada series is probably skewed at this point and I likely didn't hate it as much as I've let myself think, but either way I didn't really enjoy him at all on the 80s set. He's reliably fun in the NJ/WAR feud, though (then again "reliably fun" was the floor for just about everybody in that feud). The Heisei Ishingun run in the 90s is regularly pretty great and some of the hottest midcard stuff you'll see, especially the feud with Aoyagi and Saito in the early 90s. The 5/90 New Japan multi-man is amazing and he's maybe the second best guy in it behind Kurisu. Agreed with elliot on the '96 G1 run. The team with Tenryu was fun and as he got older he leaned nicely into the cantankerousness. Plus he has the awesome Satanico hair match. 

I'd never vote for him, but I certainly don't dread watching him at this point. 

[Ma Stump Puller]

He can be quite good and his undercard WAR association material is super high-end, but at the same time this guy just stinks cards out sometimes. I swear, almost every AJPW match I seen of this guy sucked. Johnny Smith and him stunk the joint out with a uber boring mat-work oriented match, him and Kawada can't get a good grove on for their showing and it feels really awkward, it's just a messy affair. That soured me on him a fair bit as I'd much rather put on someone who was consistently entertaining (Don Arakawa, for instance, never had a truly five-star match but he was always on the ball in everything I seen of him) than someone who could be very hit/miss.