Kazuyuki Fujita

[Ma Stump Puller]

On 4/11/2023 at 1:25 PM, CheapPop1999 said:

The staring match can kick rocks, respectfully.

I didn't think it was bad per-se, I just hated the pretentious film-school lite narratives about "oh Go is in the middle of the ring and Fujita is the outsider so he's not in the centre, it's a metaphysical battle between Inoki-Ism and Kings Road!!!" when people who actually watched NOAH regularly knew it was a regular occurrence in Fujita matches at the time that he just did for shits and giggles. It wasn't anything special, but because a lot of people who didn't see NOAH watched that match and tried to make something out of a 30 minute staring contest it got fairly popular as a result. It's more of a wrestling equivalent to a Rorschach test: it doesn't actually mean anything, therefore anyone could walk in and try to make sense of it.

 

On 4/11/2023 at 7:29 AM, club said:

Is that the one where they stare at each other for 30 mins? I'd need to rewatch it but yeah from what I remember he was better than Go. I also recall a tag match at Ryogoku with BJW guys and Suwama with a lot of staring. Is this a thing with him?

TBF my impressions of Fujita are almost entirely based on his NJPW stuff from two decades ago. I haven't kept up on NOAH. The best Fujita matches from that era had a 'how to slay the beast?' narrative. Tanahashi, Shibata, Chono. Great matches largely dependent on the opponent.

IIRC he started doing it way back in PRIDE, he did it in NOAH as apart of the Taniguchi feud, which included a honestly way better match/feud than Go/Fujita, I'd heavily recommend that over it. The staring there actually means something. As for Fujita in general in NOAH, his stuff is more or less the same but noticeably more refined, and he excels in tournaments as the supreme spoiler who could beat anyone he's paired up with. His Hideki Suzuki match is controversial for being a big technical wrestling fest, definitely enjoyable for me though.

 

[DylanZero]

2 minutes ago, Ma Stump Puller said:

I didn't think it was bad per-se, I just hated the pretentious narratives about "oh Go is in the middle of the ring and Fujita is the outsider so he's not in the centre, it's a metaphysical battle between Inoki-Ism and Kings Road!!!" when people who actually watched NOAH regularly knew it was a regular occurrence in Fujita matches at the time that he just did for shits and giggles. It wasn't anything special, but because a lot of people who didn't see NOAH watched that match and tried to make something out of a 30 minute staring contest it got fairly popular as a result. It's more of a wrestling equivalent to a Rorschach test: it doesn't actually mean anything, therefore anyone could walk in and try to make sense of it.

I think the extreme of it being 30 minutes straight of it also led to some of the worst and most braindead takes on it to make it more than what it was. And even on that note at it's core to do it so long was more or less a publicity stunt (which totally worked to be fair!) at a very very particular moment in time of the empty arena era to do it that long. In front of a crowd we would have seen it much more similar to his other matches, similar to the Taniguchi match you mentioned. They never would have done it for a full 30 in front of a crowd. The sad thing is the actual match was pretty good once they got past the first 30 minutes, and his staring stuff did lead to an epic payoff in the Fujita vs. Sugiura match in which Sugiura didn't "play ball" with the staring stuff. I feel that match should have been Fujita's swan song in NOAH and I think I would have been happy from a story standpoint of him getting put out to pasture.

 

Also hard agree on Fujita vs. Hideki, was an awesome match. 

[brockobama]

2 hours ago, DylanZero said:

I think the extreme of it being 30 minutes straight of it also led to some of the worst and most braindead takes on it to make it more than what it was.

If people perceive or feel things I don't in a match they must not exist