Mitsuhiro Matsunaga

[Grimmas]

Discuss here.

[El-P]

Awful for most his career, and tried to made up for it by being insane. But still ended up looking awful most of the time. I think Shoji Nakamaki has better performances.

 

He's probably a much better cook.

[Dylan Waco]

I've been watching a lot of Japanese sleaze/death match feds lately and was surprised by how much I enjoyed Matsunaga. As a martial arts guy with poor technique who relies on charisma to make his matches exciting he's much better than Takada, as his poor technique takes the form of recklessness where you think anything can happen at any moment. Of course it is possible (probable even) that he was largely being carried by people like Goto and Onita, but I still enjoyed a lot of that stuff. I imagine El-P is right and that he was terrible for many years, though the next memory I have of him is the crazy/infamous stuff from 99/00ish which I really enjoy to one degree or another. Probably not enough to make a list, but I'm interested to see if I'm a complete outlier for enjoying him, or if others were into his act.

[Jetlag]

He was definitely not awful. In fact, I don't ever recall seeing a bad Matsunaga performance. Yes, he lost mobility after his knee injury, but a karate guy throwing kicks is always more exciting than your standard garbage brawler. I've also grown fond of his early career karateka vs. pro wrestler stuff. He wouldn't make a top 100, but I've yet to see any evidence of him being an awful worker.